Former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, has proposed a new way to fight incessant insecurity in the Country.
He called on the Nigerian government to consider a COVID-style lockdown as a strategy to address insecurity, stressing that terrorism and banditry should be confronted as a national emergency that demands collective sacrifice.
He stated this in an interview with Channels Television on Friday.
Buratai stressed that the fight against insecurity should not be left to the military alone but should be handled just as Covid -19 was tackled.
He said “when there are national crisis we need to mobilise everybody, not just the military alone. Look at COVID-19, how much was spent, how much was invested into information, communication, advertisement, palliatives, and preventive measures.
“The whole nation was locked down because of COVID-19. We can do the same thing. We can lock down this country to make sure that everybody concentrates and deals with this cankerworm of so-called terrorists and bandits.”
The former army chief noted that before leaving office, he had warned that insurgency could last longer than expected if a long-term strategy was not adopted.
He said: “If you can remember, just before I left office, and of course immediately when I left office, I was appointed ambassador of Republic of Benin, I sent a lot of warning that this insurgency may last longer. I don’t want to quote the number of years that I mentioned, but I said it will last longer. It is a sort of warning that we really need to have a long-term plan, it is not something that you will just wish away.
“For example, I am not trying to give any excuse but the point is when there is a national crisis, we need to mobilise everybody, not just the military alone. Look at COVID-19, how much was spent? How much was invested into information, into communication, into advertisement and so on, into palliative, into a lot of preventative measures so much that the whole nation was locked down because of COVID-19.
“But we can do the same thing, we can lock down this country to make sure everybody concentrates and deals with this cankerworm called terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and so on. It is very fundamental, very important.
“I want to take also another example, Maiduguri flood last year, the whole country mobilised and supported the Borno State government and people of Borno to bring relief to make sure that the people were rehabilitated in the whole of the state, and it helped a lot.
“The same thing can be done to mobilise everybody to the North East, to the North West, psychologically through social media, through the press, and so on. Individuals can support the community.”
