The Minister of State for Defence, Mrs Olusola Obada has called for more collaboration among security agencies and a review of strategies to strengthen their grip on the current security challenges.
Obada who gave the charge while declaring open the 2012 conference of Defence Advisers and Attaches, said that all hands must be on deck to stop the activities of miscreants who were bent on destabilising the nation.
She said that government was committed to finding lasting solution to the insecurity in the country particularly the increase attacks on innocent citizens and security agents by the Boko Haram sect.
On the direction the government is heading ‘’our goal as a nation to become one of the top 20 economies in the world by the year 20:2020 is perfectly on course’’, she said.
She assured that ‘’the purpose of the transformation agenda of the President Goodluck Jonthan administration is to leave Nigeria a far better place than we met it, that is, a secured and prosperous nation where unity, peace and progress will reign,’’ adding that without security, it would be impossible for the envisage development.
The minister said the defence advisers have a crucial role to play in resolving the contemporary security challenges facing the nation essentially as the primary role they play as Defence Attaches is at the crossroads of diplomacy, strategy, economic and public relations which must be executed professionally.
According to her, their ‘’work as Defence Attaches is to support the political, economic and diplomatic initiatives of the Federal Government.’’
Obada further charged them to support and maintain healthy relationship with Nigeria’s ambassadors in their various countries of accreditation using their professional, social and intellectual competences to the advantage of the country.
She described the theme of the conference, “Focusing the Defence Attache Management and Security Systems to Meet Contemporary challenges in Nigeria’’, as timely and apt.
Earlier in his address, Major-General Sani Audu, the Director of Intelligence Agency had noted that the increasing violence and the attendant lost of lives and property required continuous reappraisal of operational strategies and intelligence gathering to overcome.
Audu said the outcome of the conference would form part of the agency’s feedback to government to devise strategies to meeting the growing challenges.
