Shettima Asks Buhari: Are Service Chiefs ‘So Indispensable?’

Amidst worsening insecurity in northern Nigeria, the immediate past governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, has challenged the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to take immediate and decisive action to address the security situation facing the region.

Shettima, on Monday, reiterated his call for the sacking of the country’s security chiefs, urging the President Buhari to replace them with “new bloods”.

THE WHISTLER reports that the calls for the sacking of the Service Chiefs heightened after the recent beheading of over 40 farmers by Boko Haram insurgents in Borno, as well as the attack on the Government Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, where about 333 schoolboys were said to be missing after gunmen invaded their hostels on Friday.

Shettima, while appearing on an Arise News program monitored by THE WHISLTER on Monday, said the federal government should not expect improvement in its ongoing counter-insurgency war if it fails to change the current Service Chiefs.

Shettima, who currently represents Borno central senatorial district in the Senate, said that northern leaders were not in doubt of Buhari’s commitment to the war against terrorism in the region, but noted that it was high time the president discarded the service chiefs because they have “outlived their usefulness” and needed to be replaced with more agile officers that would bring fresh ideas to the table.

He said, “We are not doubting the president’s commitment, we are not doubting his passion, but in all honesty, the security challenges are deteriorating by the day and its high time that the federal government rises to the challenges of leadership, finetune the strategies and inject some new blood into the system. Because albert Einstein said insanity is the act of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

“The current crops of service chiefs have outlived their usefulness. It’s high time President Buhari should get rid of them. We do appreciate their efforts in the past, but their efforts were fixed, all their game plans are not working, and its high time one should finetune the strategies [by] injecting some new blood [into the system].”

Shettima also noted that one of the reasons the armed forces were finding it difficult to address insecurity in the country was because there was no synergy in their operations.

He said, “there has to be synergy between the different arms of the security forces. For instance, the Chief of Air Staff is doing a very great job, but is there any synergy between the army and the air force and the navy? The brutal truth is no. The synergy is very poor.

“So, our position is simple. We are not doubting the president’s commitment, we’re not doubting his loyalty to our cause, but we believe that something needs to be done, and urgently, to address the security challenges in the northeast.”

Asked why he recently moved a motion for the Senate to ask President Buhari to sack the service chiefs, the senator said the simple answer was because they were longer serving the purpose for which they were appointed into office.

“Why I was agitating for the removal of service chiefs has to do with the fact that they have given their best, but their best is no longer enough,” he said.

Shettima recalled how former Nigerian leaders, Shehu Shagari, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan changed their service chiefs several times when they found that they were no longer delivering on their jobs.

“The current Chief of Defence Staff (General Abayomi Olonisakin) is course 25, he is in his 41st year of service. Is he so indispensable? The current Chief of Army Staff (General Tukur Buratai) is course 26, the current major generals did not meet them in the NDA. Are they so indispensable? No! nobody is indispensable. The definition of insanity according to Albert Einstein is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Sheittima further claimed that by refusing to retire the current service chiefs, President Buhari had done injustice to their subordinates who by next year would retire from service without reaching the zenith of their careers.

“So, we believe, there is the need for re-injection of people with new ideas with fresher perspectives to come and address the issues. By June next year, course 35 are going without reaching the pinnacle of their careers. So, justice, equity and fairness, even common sense, demands that these service chiefs should go and we will continue to emphasize that we are part of this government. We brought government into being, and we have a moral responsibility to tell truth to power when needs be.”

The senator added that, “And precisely, we are not hostile to the government, we are not antagonistic to the Buhari administration, but we have the right to [speak].”

He said northern leaders were representing a people that expect them to speak on their behalf, adding that failure to speak for them when the need arises would mean that they have failed their people.