 The Presidential Implementation and Advisory Committee for the Reform of the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces of Nigeria assigned to tackle the present trend of insecurity in the country has called for the support of the House of Representatives to achieve the task before it. The panel seeks to inform lawmakers of what it has done so far and to solicit their support and wise counsel towards assisting the committee to successfully implement some of the key recommendations that would affect the structure, roles, functions and management of the Armed Forces of Nigeria and the Ministry of Defence. For joining us to discuss this is retired Air Vice-Machael Femmi Baribol. Thank you very much for joining us, sir. Thank you for having me. So it's really interesting that the Armed Forces are finally asking for the help that they need because, you know, we always hear people say, well, the army needs more of this than that but then it's great to hear that the army is asking for help. We see that the Armed Forces have been in the forefront of fighting terrorism in the country over a decade now that there's a different kind of monster that we're dealing with which is banditry. Now, for someone who's worked, you know, in the Armed Forces you have served for several years, why do you think that it's taking so long for the welfare of the people who are in the forefront of fighting this insecurity? Why do you think it's taking so long for the government to attend to the needs of these people? Well, I don't think it's long. It's just the process in which the assistance and the help is coming. That is a problem. If you notice the Nigerian public continue to swing from being sympathetic to the military to seeing the military as villains, it's a situation that is not the best for us. But until we get to that stage when the Nigerians, other people understand that the military have played a very important role in maintaining the peace and stability of this country and also securing everyone, we will not have the right attitude. If you notice even from National Assembly, those who are had hits by the ongoing crisis, particularly in the North East, are very sympathetic to the military and always calling for more support, more assistance, and so on. Whereas in some other areas we see a different outlook and call, and that is because the military has been called too much into what are called domestic issues, issues that are normally handled by the police. So you get this negative situation. I think the military, because they feel that they should keep things on their wraps, have not been playing the media very well. Because a lot that is going on, even the losses that the military has suffered, are being kept away from the natural people. So every time that somebody close to some people gets killed or something from March, then you see sympathy from the public. The government has done some things, they have constantly done them, but there have been bottlenecks in the sense that you hear of a release today or an approval today, and it takes a very long time before some of the things come up to the fore. When you are also buying military equipment, you see what happens. First of all, you have a very long period between when you place the order and when the equipment arrives, and so when those in the National Assembly understand this, I think they will move faster in doing this thing. You also have a situation where some countries, like we saw with the US government recently, give you an equipment like the Tucano aircraft, and then they are telling you what and what you cannot do with the aircraft. That seriously limits the ability of the armed forces. But is that not as a result of the fact that we have had issues of human rights abuses, especially with the freshest of them all, which is that soldiers shot at people at the toll gates in 2020? I mean, should that not necessarily be one of the reasons why these people would be asking you not to use it for issues that would come up as human rights abuses? Well, if you are using aircrafts for bandits, terrorists, kidnappers in the Northeast and the middle bed of the country, I don't see where that comes into the issue of the toll gate. It's just that, you see, when you listen to the news, especially at CNN today, you see all kinds of human rights abuses going on in the United States of America. So the policemen of the world who is trying to tell everybody how to do things and how to do, also have a lot of skeleton in their couples. You have to be where exactly. I'll tell you, for instance, that if the US have righted women, have been known to persecute some of their men, officers and men, who committed atrocities in areas like in Vietnam and so on. But you see, when you talk about capturing terrorists and keeping them, the law says that when you capture them, then you're going to have to feed them. You're going to have to take care of them. You also take some of your soldiers who should be fighting to now guard and protect these people at the resources that you have. And then when you have been involved in acts of terrorism perpetrated by colleagues of these people, I'm not trying to speak for the soldiers who go out of the way to do some things, but the truth is that we're all humans and you must consider the conditions under which those who have been attacked are retaliating on those who are attacking them. Unfortunately, you know, human rights agencies are not there to see how our soldiers have been killed and have been ambushed and so on. But somehow, if the other things are going on. And so by the time they are arrested, everybody now wants you to treat this terrorist with kick gloves. We've just seen what has been happening all of a sudden again on the cut now, which I wrote. Today you said that you've got things under control. Tomorrow the same people show up and they're even more violent and there is something that we have to get to. But one of the things I'll say is that going to the National Assembly to ask for assistance is something that we should have been doing before. Okay, we wish to have a situation where the government just decides and buys arms and ammunition for the armed forces. Or it gets into a situation now where the armed forces realise that sometimes they must be involved in the purchase of these things. And you know that you have a defence committee, you have the Air Force and Navy committees, both in the Senate and National Assembly, these people have their own interests. So the Chief of Army staff can decide that he wants to buy a particular type of weapon system from a particular country. For reasons best known to him, maybe they can do that with us. At the end of the day we have situations in the past where from the presidency or somewhere they just call the service chief and say oh yeah, you wanted to buy a particular weapon system. He said yes. Okay, guess what? A president just came from some country on the visits. They also produced the same thing. And we've negotiated for you to get that. Now this may be totally not in line. You see, especially when you come to aircrafts, maintenance training of the technicians is a complex matter. The spare parts are not interchangeable. So a situation where you are buying six years, ten years, everything is a recipe for disaster at the end of the day. You can say oh yeah, we have a lot of aircrafts. But how many people are trained on the aircraft? How many technicians are trained on them? How are you sourcing the aircrafts on this? If instead of having 24 aircraft from six different countries, if you have all 24 from one country, you have a busload of spare parts that can be used for anyone that is going on. You have technicians that are trained and that can be deployed in different parts of the country working on the same aircrafts. These are the things that we also need to educate between the National Assembly for them to understand and to come along with the service chiefs in making these purchases. Now I'd like to point to something, a statement that was made by the chairman of the panel that went to visit the National Assembly retired Army Major General Alawari Kaze. He said something that the way the Nigerian Armed Forces were organised, trained, equipped and managed by the Defence Minister was based on the need to confront conventional threats, something that you have spoken of and not emerging security challenges. Hence the reform that the country's defence and security architecture has become imperative. Now he also says in his words, today in effect the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces of Nigeria used to be properly organised, structured, manned and required with the required mix of military and civilian personnel as this is the global best practice in almost all countries, especially developed countries. He kept on talking about the fact that the Ministry of Defence needs to be reformed and the Armed Forces of Nigeria will also ensure that we have all the Armed Forces that are affordable for the national economy while sufficient in size, structure, and equipment to respond effectively to both conventional and asymmetric war. But the key thing here is size. And size here is talking about the number of people we need to be able to win this war. And he also talks about what the economy can afford. So let's talk about that. It's very important. I remember sometime in 2016, if I'm not mistaken, soldiers were complaining and this is something you hardly see. Soldiers complaining about the fact that they do not have weapons sophisticated enough to fight the enemy that they were facing. And knowing that this is the guerrilla warfare of sorts, they need the same type of firepower, if not a higher power, for them to be able to deal with that. But also talking about the issue of warfare where most times the monies that these people need does not necessarily get to them. We've also seen cases where people were killed in the line of battle and their families are ejected from these barracks. So these are issues that need to be addressed. And I think he encapsulated it in that message. But how do we deal with the size and the economy? Size and the economy are two issues that the National Assembly have to discuss and agree upon. You see, in an ideal situation, the National Defence Committee or the National Defence Policy is drawn up in such a way that it states the threats that the Nigerian Armed Forces are required to contend with. The Army, as a rule, is designed to engage with external aggression. And you're talking about maybe on two fronts. Now, we are talking about being able to protect Nigeria and being able to go out of Nigeria to take care of issues like peacekeeping operations, like we used to have in Liberia, in Sudan, in Somalia, and so on. By the time the Nigerian government decides that, no, we want you to be able to operate on three fronts, then it means that you must be able to do those two things. Plus, maybe substantial assist the Nigerian police in managing internal aggression. Now, that committee should go back and sit down and work out the manpower, the scale of manpower that is required. It is when you work out the scale of manpower and equipment that you come back to the Nigerian government, so to say to say, OK, right, this is it, and you are for to pay or to recruit and equip and this. Remember, at the end of the Nigerian Civil War, we had to, you know, we had to release a large number, well over 100 soldiers. Some of them were sent to the police, some were sent to Cossacksons and so on, because the army had grown so large to be able to fight that war. Subsequently, we have been operating on what would be a much bigger force. Now, if we are going to go higher, then definitely we are going to have to get more manpower. There are more in terms of equipment, salaries and even bags and so on. Those are issues that have not been clearly spelled out by the government. When you mentioned the issue of people being kicked out of the bags, the existing rule is that only uniform personnel, savvy personnel are staying in the bags and you have, let's say somebody retires or somebody dies, there is a stipulated amount of time that they stay in the bags and they move on. Well, unfortunately, we have lost AVM, retired AVM, Femi valuable, but that has been an interesting conversation. We're hoping that we can have more of that, but that's all we can give to you tonight on Plus Politics. I am Mary Anna Cohn. Thank you for watching.