The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has cautioned Nigerians against actions and utterances that tend to politicise security issues.
It said such tendencies were inimical to the ongoing counterinsurgency operations in the country.
The Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor, who spke yesterday in Abuja, regretted that politicisation had been responsible for the escalation of different shades of security challenges in some parts of the country.
“I would plead that issues that border on national security and defence should not be politicised,” he said.
Irabor spoke at a roundtable discussion with the theme: Going for Broke: Fighting Insecurity in Nigeria, organised by 21st Century Chronicle Media Organisation.
The Defence Chief said bringing primordial sentiments into security issues could dampen the morale of troops in the frontline, adding that this aggravated the insecurity situation in the past.
According to him, the trend has inadvertently promoted the cause of adversaries who have taken up arms against the Nigerian state.
He said the situation had improved tremendously but that the trend had not been totally eliminated.
Irabor listed resource constraints as one of the issues confronting the ongoing counterinsurgency campaign, pinning the constraints to inadequate manpower and equipment.
“The situation has, however, improved in the last few years but it is not yet Uhuru,” he said.
Irabor also identified the nation’s porous borders as one of the challenges confronting military operations.
The Defence Chief stressed that a lot of loose weapons used in the Libyan crisis found their way into Nigeria through unmanned borders.
He also lamented the slow pace of judicial process in the prosecution of terror suspects arrested during military operations and called for appropriate judicial reforms that would speed up the process.
“Over-reliance on foreign input in terms of equipment and platforms and inadequate bilateral commitment from Nigeria’s immediate neighbours, like Cameroon, Chad, Niger, are also some of the factors that should be addressed,” Irabor said.
On the way forward, the Defence Chief called for intelligence-driven approach and the need to increase the operational capacity of the police and other security agencies across the country.
This, he said, would lessen the burden on the military.
Irabor also said 80 per cent of troops were in one operation or the other in different parts of the country.
The CDS urged leadership across all segments of the nation’s life to place more emphasis on building and strengthening military industrial complex in the country, even if the facility is going to be private sector driven.