A support group of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately relieve the nation’s service chiefs of their jobs.
The group said the sack of the service chiefs had become imperative to pave way for the injection of fresh ideas into the country’s security architecture.
Dr. Jubrin Bichi, the National Convener of the group, known as APC Support Core, was reacting to a statement by the National Democratic Front (NDF), alleging a sinister motive to destabilize the government through an abrupt removal of the heads of security agencies.
Bichi, in a press statement on Sunday, insisted that allowing the service chiefs to continue in their positions given the security problems confronting the country would not be in the best interest of anyone.
He commended the service chiefs for their contributions in the fight against insecurity in the country but insisted that fresh hands were needed to tackle the problems.
The statement reads, “Ordinarily, we would not have responded to this unsubstantiated and inciting statement by this faceless group under the aegis of National Democratic Front, NDF, but as a group very loyal to our respected party, the APC and having read the statement purportedly attributed to this faceless group, we feel duty-bound to respond so as not to mislead our president and our party that have been saddled with the mandate by Nigerians to pilot the affairs of the country for the next four years.
“We believe strongly that the service chiefs have tried their best to restore security in the country since their assumption of office but given the dimension in which insecurity has assumed in the country,we feel that its high time fresh ideas and hands were injected.
“Nobody is an island in any area of responsibility. No doubt,the service chiefs have tried what they know how to do best but given that our president has been given fresh four-year mandate,we believe it would be in his interest and also in the best interest of the nation for him to start the renewed term with new set of security chiefs with fresh ideas.
“The only way to get fresh ideas for the President to address the security challenges is to remove the incumbent service chiefs to give room for younger officers to grow.
“The nation should do away with unproductive tenure elongation in areas where fresh ideas are needed.
“We know the way the military organisations operate. Those with fresh ideas dare not come out against their superiors or else they risk premature retirement from service. So the current service chiefs should go to allow officers with fresh ideas address our alarming security issues.
“While we commend the service chiefs for their services to their motherland so far, we appealed to our dear president to immediate sack these service Chiefs who are already in their retirement years but are still kept in service by the President in what many have interpreted as partisan needs.
“Their continued stay in office no doubt,is gradually weakening the morale in the armed forces as three sets of officers have now had their careers stagnated.”
While praying the president to initiate new action to halt killings and kidnappings of Nigerian citizens,the APC Support Core Group maintained that insecurity is being sustained unabated by sheer negligence or exhaustion of ideas by the nation’s service chiefs.
“While we will not want to respond to issues of security as being steered by a supposedly sponsored group in its mission for self aggrandizement, the APC Support Core Group feel constrained to advise where necessary given that our president and by extension,our party have the mandate of Nigerians to provide good and quality governance devoid of self consideration above national interest.
“The deliberate ploy by the so called NDF to heat up the polity unnecessarily with its unfounded claim ‘that this same opposition had been named in a plot to pressure President Muhammadu Buhari to drop the service chiefs so that a new crop of military chiefs that are sympathetic to the opposition will be appointed following which they will overthrow the government and hold a shabby transition to hand over power to the opposition is uncalled for,” he added.
