Following his dissatisfaction with the worsening insecurity in the country, President Muhammadu Buhari is planning a complete re-engineering and overhaul of the nation’s security apparatuses.
This is even as he has again ordered the nation’s security chiefs to rejig their security strategy to restore peace and stability to the nation.
The National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd), disclosed this, yesterday while briefing State House Correspondents on the outcome of the meeting of the National Security Council presided over by the president.
The Security Council meeting was held at the Executive Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The president, according to the NSA, reaffirmed his last marching orders to the nation’s security chiefs that their best effort is not good enough.
Monguno revealed that since the issues involved are operational issues, the Minister of Defence, Bashir Magashi, “is working on something” likely to give a new direction to the security agencies.
The NSA also disclosed that the council noted that proliferation of drugs is driving insecurity in the country.
Monguno said the manner of killings of their victims can only mean one thing: that the bandits, kidnappers and terrorists are out of their minds.
He quoted President Buhari as noting that Nigerians have lost confidence in the security sector, stressing that the president was determined to restore that confidence.
Monguno attributed the rise in insecurity in the North to sale and consumption of hard drugs, admitting that the use of hard drugs has assumed a dangerous and worrisome dimension.
The NSA said that the President reaffirmed his last marching orders to the nation’s security chiefs whose best effort he had at the June 18 meeting said was not good enough.
According to Monguno, the president ordered the service chiefs and heads of security agencies to overhaul their security strategies, bearing in mind that the Federal Government owes the citizenry a duty to guarantee the protection of lives and property.
He said: “Mr President has also directed that we must rejig our strategy that is both in terms of operation and intelligence we must rejig our strategy to prevent further catastrophe.
“We must bear in mind that we owe a duty to the people that elected his government, our government and at the end of the day without securing the nation all other things cannot be addressed such as revamping the economy and also fighting corruption.’’
According to the NSA, his office presented a memo to the Security Council on the danger of drug abuse in the society as well as the need to urgently address the problem.
He revealed that between 2011 and 2019, approximately 17 manufacturing laboratories of dangerous substances were located by the various security agencies and destroyed while increasing activities of illegal cultivators of ‘Cannabis’ were also recorded.
Monguno said criminals had resulted in the use of illegal substances and dangerous drugs like Tramadol to unleash violence on innocent citizens in society.