Anti-Corruption war: Defence Minister tasks Nigerians to support Buhari

Minister of Defence, Mansur Muhammad Dan-Ali has charged Nigerians to cooperate and support President Muhammadu Buhari in his efforts to combat terrorism and stem corruption with a view to rewriting the history of Nigeria.

He gave the charge at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) book launch, tilted, ‘Leadership & Complex Military Operations’, at the weekend.

Apparently worried by the present situation of Nigeria, the Minister who doubled guest of hon0our and guest lecturer at the occasion remarked that for the country to maintain its position as giant of Africa, Citizens must cooperate with   the leadership.

The Guest Lecturer was represented by a Director in the Ministry of Defence, Dr. David Kemje, and the public lecture was titled, “Leadership and the National question in Nigeria, the essence of military leadership for national unity”.

Represented by a Director in the Ministry of Defence, Dr. David Kemje the minister recalled with pains how “bad followership had caused the country various bloody crisis, such as Maitesine in the 80s, Shiites clashes, militancy, insurgency and a host of similar crises”.

He described leadership as a critical factor in all human endeavours and as such, followership has the duty to compliment it positively in order to build a peaceful nation and environments.

“Today we are talking about leadership as a challenge, and as we all heard, leadership is quite critical, especially at this moment in our history, so deliberate effort must be done for us to endure its perspective.

“Leadership does not stand in isolation, leadership has to do with the man in front, and those following behind, all agreed to the principle that, yes, an objective is before us and we should all drive to achieve it, so essentially, every Nigerian plays a part in ensuring that leadership succeeds.

“And I will urge that we look at it in a broader perspective that today we have a government in place that is turning a very difficult sod, we should support by understanding that there are levels of sacrifices we have to make in order to ensure that we achieve the objective that is before us”.

In his own reaction to the present security challenge, the NDA Commandant, Major General MT Ibrahim has identified critical training as the panacea.

“One of the ways out of insurgency is to take a look at the critical training in the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) and situate it within the contemporary environment”.

To this end, he retorted that “training that is what we are doing. And in relation to leadership, NDA has always emphasised or anchor its training on young leaders who are the bastions of any military operation, be conventional or unconventional. So, that was intensified.

“This book is an added feather in that effort because the most important thing is to give the book to the young cadets much volume to read. And they impact such knowledge to themselves so that tomorrow, the Armed Forces will be better led”, the NDA boss said.

Earlier, the author, Professor Chukwuma Osakwe‎, Director Centre for the Study of Leadership and Complex Military Operations, NDA, explained that the idea for the book was informed by the need for leaders of the country to come up on a dialogue table to discuss the concept of leadership.

“The authority decided to have a centre that will be a think factory on the issue, the concept, the practice of leadership, and I also noticed that we have dealt on literature. That was why we at the centre decided to put together a work that will serve as a takeoff for the robust discussion that is necessary on the issue and concept of leadership especially as it affect us in Nigeria”.