President Muhammadu Buhari and State Governors on Tuesday ended their meeting on the state of the nation’s security with a call for a joint strategy to bring various conflicts to an end within time limits.
They also called on field commanders to take measures to protect civilian communities as a confidence-building mechanism between the military and those communities.
Malam Garba Shehu, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, in a statement in Abuja said Buhari and governors made their feelings known at the end of the virtual meeting coordinated from the State House, Abuja.
The president and the governors believed that ”when the trust that has been lost between both parties is re-established, there would be improved cooperation in intelligence-gathering and sharing.”
The presidential aide revealed that the meeting also agreed that poverty and youth unemployment were at the root of the nation-wide security challenges, and needed to be addressed with greater vigour by all tiers of government.
Shehu said the meeting also focused on the country’s security policies and approaches in tackling the internal security challenges with a charge that intelligence-gathering and sharing must be optimized.
”The President used the opportunity to dispel commonly held assumptions that the terrorists in the Northeast had far more weapons and money than the government, stressing that what is left of them are “mere scavengers desperate for food, raiding shops and markets, and killing innocent persons in the process.”
Buhari also expressed concern that in spite of the fact that borders with neighboring countries had been shut, bandits and terrorists continued to have access to small weapons.
“These terrorists are in the localities. How is it that they are not short of small arms?” he queried the security and intelligence chiefs.
