Nigerian Chief Of Defence Staff Promises Economic Improvement
The Nigerian Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa CDS has assured Nigerians that pipeline vandalism and criminality will soon be over for economic improvement in the country.
The Defence Chief gave the assurance after his meeting with Heads of Security and Intelligence Agencies on the review of ongoing operations in the country in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
General Musa said that “this was in accordance with the mandate given to them by the President to end the menace in the country”.
He noted that they have set their challenges and they accept that they must all come together to find the solution to the problem.
According to him, to solve this problem, they need the cooperation of everybody, all agencies are collaborating.
“We need a corporation of members of the public. We need to take every step that we need to take to address all these issues. So I’m going to assure you that in the days ahead, we are going to see results of what we have discussed here today”, he said.
“We know that Nigeria relies so much on what we can produce and so we want to use this medium to appeal to the communities to have an understanding. Yes. We know trust has been a problem, but they can trust us they can trust the government that we want to do things differently”, he added.
The Defence Chief stressed that everyone will be carried along, everyone has a role to play not only for the security agencies alone.
He emphasized that there is a need for the communities to understand that pipeline vandalism and all the hazards being caused is also affecting them directly and we need to stop that.
“We need to work together and with this meeting we had today is to harmonize that based on the Mandate that the President has given us. We’re going to work together as a team. All the operations will be harmonized coming under the Joint Task Force with the land components of all the other agencies, and we’re going to work and bring result”, he added.
Earlier, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC), Mr. Mele Kyari says Mr. President has directed CDS to take control of the crisis that we’re having in the Niger Delta operational area.
“Clearly oil and gas vandalism has become a major national issue”, he said.
He noted that Mr. President has directed the CDS to ensure that they contend this within the shortest time to restore national production to the level that Mr. President and our country is expecting.
“And to do this, there must be coordination and cooperation of all Armed Forces, the police, the Defence Intelligence Agencies and the Department of Military Intelligence and everyone in Nigerian police the DSS and everyone is on board to see that this activity goes forward so that we can restore production”, he said.
He noted that without restoring oil and gas production, they cannot have that stability that they all deserve and Mr. President is clearly focused on this to deliver value to the country.
According to him, it is impossible to do this without having settlements around the country that we have in our professional area.
Mr. Kyari said that “they already seen progress, they have seen substantial value that is being created by the coordination and cooperation”.
In the same vein, the Inspector General of Police, IGP, Kayode Egbetakun said that “the meeting they had today was a security meeting”.
IGP Egbetekun noted their challenges and they accepted that.
He said “they must all come together to solve these problems, so they need the cooperation of everybody”.
According to him, all agencies are collaborating to ensure that the problems come to an end. He assured in the days ahead, there will be results.
Olusola Akintonde
