Afenifere, the socio-political body of Pan-Yoruba, Afenifere, has asked President Buhari to address the lapses in the country’s security system, just as he did last week in his All Progressive Congress (APC) political party.
Recall that President Buhari recommended his party’s National Working Committee NWC sack last week and this was implemented immediately at the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja State House.
Reacting to this development, Afenifere asked President Buhari to apply the same swiftness that was used in sacking his party’s NWC to also dismiss the service chiefs.
While lamenting the country’s escalating cases of abduction, banditry, and terrorist attacks by Boko Haram insurgents, Afenifere, speaking through its spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin, wondered why the president continued to allow service chiefs to remain in office.
“It is clear that we have lost the war against Boko Haram insurgents even though the Federal Government has made so much propaganda about their exploits against Boko Haram. On a daily basis, it is becoming clearer that Boko Haram is on top of us.
We need to get back to the drawing board, to devise strategies to contain these criminals; otherwise, Nigeria may go under with these insurgents.” the statement read
Afenifere advised the president to go beyond scolding and relieve the security chiefs of their duties. The group said if President Buhari felt that of the best service chiefs were not good enough, as he told them, he should immediately sack them, rather than keep them at their posts without any clear performance.
“That was a totally unexpected decision. For those who have failed us in the last five years, who are not able to contain insurgency and the only thing the president could do was to warn them that he was not satisfied with their performance without kicking them out of office, appointing fresh hands, and boosting morale in the armed forces is unacceptable.
There are young officers who have been demoralised because these service chiefs should have gone long ago and other people would have risen in their place.
By leaving them when they are not performing, you are killing morale.
Within your political party, how many months has the crisis taken, yet you dissolved the NWC, put a caretaker committee. Why can’t you rejig the security architecture like that?” the group asked.