Defence chief advocates joint effort to curb insecurity

Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petinrin, on Monday called for joint effort in tackling security challenges facing the country.

Petinrin made the call while inaugurating residential blocks for the personnel of the Joint Maritime Security Training Centre, Ojo, Lagos.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria, the CDS said the security of the country should not be left to security people alone, calling on Nigerians to unite and flush out criminals in the country.

“If any group of people can get itself together and disturb the peace of a town or a state, it is now the responsibility of the rest of us to get together and put all these criminals in prison,” he said.

The defence chief said the security problems in some states were relative, adding that the country, with 36 states, and going by statistics, meant there was no problem all over the country.

Petinrin said although there were problems in some states, the situation should not be over-emphasised to the detriment of the “good job” the security personnel were doing.

He said, “The fact that we have good security in 30 out of the 36 states means that you should commend somebody but even in these states, where we have problems, we are tackling them.”

He said graduates of the centre would enhance the security of the maritime environment.

The CDS said the centre would train soldiers in boarding and searching, anti-piracy techniques, rules of the road, contact drills and key asset protection.

Pentinrin said, “Our desire is to bequeath to future generations, a centre that is capable and operationally responsive to the task of security in the maritime environment.

“I expect that the administrators of this centre will utilise the quality manpower that is available to them in the production of capable security operatives.

“By so doing, we would have justified the huge resources expended by Nigeria and those donated by the government of the UK and the US.”

According to the CDS, the first set of 88 students have been nominated for the training.

On his part, Head, Trade and Investment of the UK in Nigeria, Mr. Mike Purues, said the UK Government was keen to partner with Nigeria to enhance the capability of the armed forces in the joint maritime sector.