Army Chief urges troops to think outside the box to end the insurgency war

By: Bodunrin Kayode 

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Olufemi Oluyede, has said that he was in Maiduguri last week to ginger his officers and men to change the narrative of the war by thinking outside the box to get positive results.

General Oluyede said that for too long the Army has been thinking after the same old pattern of fighting asymmetric warfare, adding that it was time to think differently so that the enemy would be flushed out completely.

General Oluyede said he was not unaware of the strengths and weaknesses of his troops, which is why the entire management team in the Army Headquarters will make sure that more sophistication is added to their existing platforms to enable them to increase their strengths and overcome the enemy on all fronts once and for all.

In a jam-packed interview after he had toured critical areas of the theater, the Army chief went on: “I’m here to speak to my officers and soldiers and to appraise their operational readiness, and that I have done. What is going to be new here is that we need to reappraise our operations so that we can get a different result. 

“We don’t want to continue with operations whereby we’ll be doing what we’ve been doing before and getting the same results. Now, we want different results. So we’ve sat down. We have strategized. We’re going to bring in more importance into our challenges, bringing more platforms to support the soldiers so that they can do their work well. 

“I think we have achieved that aim. So we’re going back to Abuja to see how we can add more to their platforms to support them in the operations, and I’m sure we’ll get better returns.” Said the army chief. 

Responding to questions on challenges affecting the Commanders and men on the ground, the Army chief went on: “I’m very aware of these challenges, but I want to take one moment to make you realize the fact that there will always be challenges. 

“Now, the most important thing is how we react to those challenges. If you recall, I was in Sokoto when the issue of the Lakurawa people came up. I was prompted to go to Sokoto then, and the essence of me going was to see what we could do to make things better. 

“And for the past two months, you must have seen that something is being done there. I’m talking about Zamfara, and you know, North West in general; we are also going to be backing up the operations with technology to see how we can make things better.”

Army Chief urges troops to think outside the box to end the insurgency war