The presidency has asked Nigerians not to blame Service Chiefs for the prolonged Boko Haram insurgency.
Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said this on NTA’s ‘Good Morning Nigeria’ programme.
The comment follows calls for the President to rejig the security architecture of the country.
He noted that challenges in the war against Boko Haram is caused by the Libyan crisis and proliferation of small arms from the country.
Shehu stated that the Nigerian military deserves commendation and support from citizens.
He said, “Our Armed Forces are doing an enormously good job, they are not sitting on their laurels but the challenges have mounted because of factors extraneous to the region and Nigerians should have an appreciation and be sympathetic and see that all of the things about the collapse of Libya is no fairytale.
“Europeans for their competing interests in Libya were dropping weapons into villages in Libya. A lot of these elements have found their way into ungoverned spaces in the Sahel.
“Could it be better with the sacking of the service chiefs? My sense is that the President as the commander-in-chief is not a novice in the first instance.
Shehu pointed out that Buhari “was a military commander, a military head of state and the latitude of opinions intellectual, security, military available to him is not available to most of the critics.”
He lambasted them for trying “to interlope in a way and begin to speak on matters of which they do not have the competence to pass judgement.”
