Senate Committee Chairman on the Army,Senator Ali Ndume has said that the call for sack of Service Chiefs is not the answer to ending insecurity in the country rather what is needed is adequate funding and equipment’for the military.to perform.
Ndume made this known on Channels Television on Tuesday evening.
He said that the Army cannot perform in the present circumstances stressing that for the Army to perform, the government should rise and give i them the neccessary support.
” If the Army has to succeed in the security challenges that we are facing, then the Nigerian government have to stand up,give them the neccessary equipment, the resources they need and then we can say oh if you don’t do this within so so time you are gone
“But right now we lost 18 or 20 soldiers in Katsina as a result of ambush ,if those Army had a single drone that can go 30 to 40 kilometers ahead of them,as a kind of surveillance to see what is going on in their targeted place,, they will not be going there unprepared.”
Ndume disclosed that he was away for prayer when the motion calling for the sack of the Service Chiefs was raised and said
“”As you can see,as the Presidency rightly responded you know it is not our responsibility It is that of Mr President to appoint whoever he wants for the position of service chiefs.
“The issue of insecurity in Nigeria should be addressed and it can only be addressed if you provide whoever you assign to that position the neccessary tools meant and the resources he needs to execute that project,if he fails to do that then you have every reason to sack him and get sombody else..But as at now, even if you sack service chiefs tommorow, since the soldiers on ground are not equipped, they are not well motivated and they don’t have the number, how can they win the war?
“Nigerian Army is in the North East fighting insurgency, they are in the North West noi fighting banditry,they are in North Central facing Kidnappers, herdsmen and all that, they are in South South making sure that the issue of pipeline vandalisation or stealing of Crude oil is stopped.
According to him, those soldiers that died in Damboa in bombs planted would not have died if there were bomb detectors or mine detectors ahead of them, that would have been avoided
In the N10trillion budget of 2020, go and check it is less than 1% that wss allocated to the Army and that was not even released until last week 7months into the year. It was only last week that they released 50%of the budget.”.
