 I'm very pleased and honored to join you at this 32nd Convocation Ceremony and the graduation of the cadets of the 69th Regular Course and postgraduate students and the conferment of degrees Honoraries Causa on several distinguished Nigerians. I bring you the very warm felicitations of President Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces President Mohammed Buhari. I also congratulate the most deserving Nigerian leading lights who today have been admitted to the distinguished ranks of Honorary Graduates with the conferment of Honorary Doctorate Degrees, General Awali Kazeem, retired, former Chief of Army Staff, General Alexander O Ogomudia, former Chief of Army Staff, and former Chief of Defence Staff, Chief Eric Omeofia, founder and CEO of the Risco Foods and Professor Fumio Lonishakling of King's College London, the first black woman to become Professor of King's College London and first female professor to deliver an inaugural lecture at the college. Congratulations to you all. This illustrious institution has for decades produced courageous servants of our country in war and in peace, and I convey the gratitude of the entire nation to the staff past and present for building and sustaining the high traditions of cutting-edge military training and scholarship that have produced the gallant alumni of this academy. May I congratulate the graduates and postgraduate students who today join the illustrious generations of outstanding graduates of this academy. This convocation is a celebration of your achievement in scaling the mental and physical hurdles meant to test your abilities in your chosen profession. Permit me therefore a few minutes to highlight some of the signposts and contexts of the new security environment which you will face. The first context is that you must contend with the mix of asymmetric conflicts, hybrid warfare, insurgencies and armed criminal activities perpetrated by criminal non-state actors. These are conflicts that are novel in their viciousness but are dated in their origins. They include the new threats of mass kidnapping for ransom and for military leverage, the use of victims of kidnapping as human shields. We now have to deal with the access that these criminal gangs have and these insurgents have to sophisticated weaponry and lethal ordnance. The new possibilities also of access to even more lethal and more devastating weaponry from the dark web and an ever-growing economy in illegal arms and ammunition. How do you engage a vicious, lawless enemy along the lines of the Geneva Convention? What are the new rules of engagement with well, especially where the adversary is a well-equipped non-state criminal act? The second context that we must take note of are the realities of living in the digital age. Digitalization has created a whole new world, cyberspace, where all transactions and activity, commercial, social, financial and even crucial military intelligence take place. This virtual world requires protection and security from enemies and malpractice, including the threats of hacking and other forms of cyber warfare which could inflict damage on our cyber infrastructure and compromise critical economic sectors such as telecommunications and financial services. The proliferation of digital channels and the rapid growth of mobile banking raises new concerns about data privacy and security as well as vulnerabilities to malware infections designed to steal money, which if unaddressed could subvert our economy. We see cyberspace as part of our strategic domain and this is why the federal government has rolled out legislative and policy measures in the form of the Cyber Crimes Act of 2015, the National Data Protection Policy to safeguard our cyber infrastructure. Indeed the Cyber Crimes Act provides for the designation of computer systems and data networks as constituting critical national information infrastructure. The National Cyber Security Policy designates the financial services sector and other sectors as national critical information infrastructure. So there is no doubt that the digital domain is one of the frontiers that your generation of our armed forces will be increasingly tasked to defend. More broadly, it is clear that we cannot secure or defend our country, a country of this size with human assets alone. We must leverage technology. At a time when national resources are stretched thin, we still have to come up with technology driven solutions to address our security needs, whether we are discussing the policing of our borders or intelligence, surveillance, or reconnaissance tools aimed at identifying criminal elements within our coastal waters or locating terrorists hiding within the general population. We must become severe in the development and deployment of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to complement our human resources. When applied creatively, technology can be a force multiplier, amplifying our potential and our capacity to effectively secure our territory. The third strategic context that we must be cognizant of is that of climate change and its implication for national security and military planning. Aside from the threats of environmental damage as a multiplier of threats of various kinds, desert encroachment and severe weather conditions create new socioeconomic problems. It is more certain than ever that the next few decades will see a sharp decline in the use of fossil fuels, especially oil and gas. Many countries in the global north are not only aggressively preparing for the use of electric vehicles and the decommissioning of combustion engines, but they are preventing also the public funding of gas projects, especially in countries such as ours, which are reaching gas. Aside from the serious revenue loss from declining earnings from oil and gas, there are disruptions that may be caused because of our military's dependence on fossil fuels for transport, for logistics, mobility and weapons deployment. Certainly, we must rigorously consider the implications of these shifts on our national defence apparatus because as our country pursues energy transition, it is worth setting a goal for our defence security sector as well, an equivalent energy transition strategy for our military. The quest for clean energy leads inevitably to considering new options for civilians as well as military users. This is a challenge to which your generation of graduates must apply itself. The fourth context that we must consider is that of building our local defence capabilities. Today the procurement of ours is often subjected to the vagaries of geopolitics, geo-economics and the caprices of the international arms industry. And so in a country the size and population of Nigeria, with threats to our citizenry and sovereignty in different locations, it is absolutely imperative that we build our indigenous national defence capabilities. This means revitalising our local military industrial competencies and investing in the local capacity to manufacture armaments. All our research and development entities within the defence sector must come up as a priority, the growth of our local armaments industry. The beneficial effect of this will be twofold. It will gradually reduce some aspects of our defence costs, while enabling us to devote our resources to procure the top-of-the-range state-of-the-art armaments from abroad. Simultaneously it will open a new frontier of economic growth by advancing our industrial aspirations with a salutary effect of creating jobs for our people. To borrow a military term the policy shift will be a forced multiply, enabling us to optimise our resources, maximise our national defence capabilities and propel local industry. These are worthy goals that should inspire patriotic military elites. I'm excited to note that the 69th regular course is the first to use the revised context-sensitive new defence academy curriculum and I commend the CDS, the service chiefs and the commandant and faculty of the NDA on this phenomenal achievement. Finally, this generation of warrior scholars must devote itself as its forebears have done to preserving the unity of this country. This has always been the highest calling of the Nigerian military. Indeed the armed forces of Nigeria have long been considered one of the most unified and unifying of our institutions. In today's environment we recognise the national defence and preservation of national unity in particular will not be wrought merely by force of arms. You are all familiar of course with the currency of non-kinetic strategies and fifth generation warfare in contemporary military thought, so I need not belabor the point. It is suffice to say that we must invest in strengthening civil military relations and enhancing the bonds of trust between our communities and those that have sworn to protect them. This is crucial to the cause of preserving our unity. We must not allow the rhetoric and the actions of those determined to use ethnicity and religion to advance their often narrow and selfish interests to affect your belief in the righteousness, the strength and prosperity for all that a large and diverse united nation offers to all of its peoples. Let me conclude by once again congratulating the graduating cadets of the 69th regular course and postgraduate students. I wish you strength and victory in your service to our nation and extend my appreciation to our esteemed guests who took the time to join this impressive ceremony and I offer my profound congratulations as well to the parents and guardians of the graduates for being pillars of support and sources of circle on their journey to this day. Thank you very much for listening. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.