WE MUST BE RESILIENT TO END INSURGENCY

Lagbaja who is the commander of brigade 2 of Nigeran army spoke yesterday during the 2 Brigade Officers Training Day held at 6 Battalion Officers Mess, Wellington Bassey, Igbawa, charged soldiers to brace up with high-level skills in order to end the insurgency.

He said, “Logistics is good, but it will always be inadequate. Every stakeholder has a role to play in ending insurgency and you (soldiers) constitute the critical stakeholder. So we must be resilient to end it.

“We are trying to build resilience in you to end the insurgency. There must be balance both from the Government, Military and the People. We, as soldiers must fight to end the insurgency.

“It is not about looking up to the authority, we need to change our mindset in fighting insurgency. When you go with the mindset that the authority must do it all then we may fail, but when you go with the mindset that we will defeat them, we will succeed”

The Commander who stressed that all hands be on deck to end the war, noted that the dynamics of the modern approach to crises management calls for close cooperation between all the security agencies and stakeholders.

He said that that the theme for this years’ training day “Inter-agency Cooperation: Imperative for Efficient Joint Operations” could not have come in such an auspicious time than now.

In his lecture entitled “Building Confidence and Resilience in Troops to Combat Contemporary Threat: The place of Junior Commanders”, Lt. Col. Yakubu Nwadiscas, said that confidence and resilience were essential for both independent and joint security troops deployed on internal security duties within the area of operations.

He said that junior officers must posses the ability to encourage troops especially when the battle turns against own side, adding that to instil confidence and resilience in troops, commanders must live by examples.

“When you lead by example, you create a picture of possibility even among the weakest.

The subordinate commander must learn to correct his troops when they err and commend them when they excel. This could be done in the form of briefing or another organised gathering,” he said.

The Nigeria Police force (NPF), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Nigeria Immigration Service,(NIS) Nigeria Corrective Center, and Federal Road Safety Corps were among sister agencies present at the occasion.