President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday told the nation’s security chiefs that he is “not ready to exit government as a failure”
National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, disclosed to State House Correspondents after the President met with heads of military, police, and other security agencies at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja on Thursday.
The President, therefore, threatened to sack and replace the security chiefs if the security situation in the country did not improve.
According to the NSA, “the President has made it abundantly clear to the heads of security agencies to go back to work immediately after the security meeting, warning that he will have to make another change if the security situation in Nigeria does not improve soon.
And he has also made it very, very clear that he’s not ready to exit government as a failure. He is not going to tolerate that he’s made changes and is ready to make further changes if he is not satisfied. He is completely determined to ensure that there’s a turnaround in the fortunes in the theatre of operations”.
Monguno said that the meeting focused largely on issues arising from the successes recorded in the theatre of operations throughout the North East.
“It is evident that a lot of successes have been recorded. Large numbers of people are surrendering in the northeast as a consequence of the relentless efforts of the Armed Forces, intelligence and security agencies.
This is very, very evident. We’ve never had such large numbers of people defecting from the other side, back to the Nigerian side, mainly, as a result of many issues within the theatre, issues of infighting among the various factions of the terrorist groups.
“But the new drive of the Armed Forces, the police, the intelligence agencies, there’s been greatest cooperation, greater synergy intelligence sharing, as well as our partners in the regional intelligence fusion unit.
So, the President was briefed, the President is quite happy that there’s been a tremendous success, especially with the advent of the new service chiefs and Inspector General of Police.”
Concerning insecurity in the Northwest and Plateau State, the NSA said “we have seen a significant drop in the number of incidents of kidnapping and banditry, nevertheless, a lot has to be done. Because like I’ve always said in the past, as far as the people are concerned, there shouldn’t be any incident of kidnapping, banditry, and other incidents of insecurity.
We also addressed the issue in Plateau the recent killings and the President has made he’s given certain directives to address that is also expressed confidence in the efforts of the Governor of Plateau”.
