Okwe Obi, Abuja
A Coalition of 102 Civil Society for Peace and Good Governance (COSOGOG), has claimed that the successful rescue of a United States citizen, Philip Nathan Watson, has exposed Nigeria’s weakness in tackling insurgency ravaging the country
Aside commending the US government for the operation, it expressed shocked how the American Navy Seal carried out successful rescue operation in the country without the involvement and knowledge of Nigerian security services.
To this end, COSOGOG National Coordinator, Ibrahim Gadzama and National Secretary, Gboyega Fayemi, in a statement, yesterday, called on President Mohammadu Buhari, to sack the service chiefs, for failing to curb banditry despite huge budgetary allocation.
Gadzama said: “We, the entire management and members of this group wish to commend the American government and their navy seal team 6 for rescuing one of its citizens who was kidnapped in Niger Republic and later moved to Nigeria by bandits. This show of patriotism and commitment by the US government is phenomenal.
“However, this action by the US Seal is not only a very big breach of our sovereignty as a nation but also indicates that there is a big gap in our country’s security architecture.
“We call for an immediate action against those entrusted with the security of our nation. All the service chiefs must be sacked and replaced with committed younger generals before it is too late.
“We know that in a matter of days, we may begin to get some cosmetic responses from our security forces justifying the raid or giving excuses for their failure, but the obvious fact is that this raid by America Navy Seal has further confirmed our position that our security chiefs are not on top of their game and need to go home.
“The service chiefs and our intelligence community have lost ideals to tackle our current security challenges. The morale in the security forces, especially the Armed Forces is now very low.
“If the American Seal can enter into Nigeria unchecked, undetected and rescue a kidnapped citizen, it then goes to show that our intelligence and the entire security architecture is faulty which consequently requires a total overhaul.
“This US operation has further exposed us to the world that our country is vulnerable and prone to external and internal attack or attacks any day, hence there is an urgent need not only to relieve the service chiefs of their positions but a total restructuring of the entire security architecture.
“There is no denying the fact that the service chiefs, having spent more than five years in of service have carried out some reforms and effected some changes in their respective forces but we strongly feel they are now bereft of new ideas on how to tackle the increasing security challenges. We feel that given this situation, it is the time for them to go.
“In other countries, they should have ordinarily resigned by now but since we know they won’t do that, we jointly appeal to Mr President to as a matter of national security, urgently sack them.”