Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to consider recalling all ex-servicemen and women who will take the fight to the insurgents until they are rolled back and defeated.
Mr Atiku gave the advice in a statement on the “deteriorating security situation” on Tuesday.
According to him, Nigerians are now live in fear for their lives and that of their loved ones.
He wrote: “Nowhere seems to be safe. Farms, markets, schools, homes, mosques, churches, and urban areas are all affected. Terrorists are spreading their areas of operation beyond the Northeast, into far-flung areas as far as Niger State in the North-Central. That is mere hours from our Federal Capital.”
He urged the Federal Government to consider recalling all ex-servicemen and women, who are willing to return to service, and take the fight to the insurgents until they are rolled back and defeated.
“As a former vice-chairman of the National Security Council, I am aware that Nigeria has a sizeable population of military veterans, who are alive, and were trained locally and internationally, and it serves no purpose to allow these valuable national assets lie fallow when there is an existential threat to our nation.’’
“Call them up immediately, mobilize them to the field. The time has come for us to put in all our effort and stamp out this menace from our nation. The men and women of Nigeria’s armed forces, whether serving or retired, who restored peace to Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and São Tomé and Príncipe can, and should be used to do the same in the motherland, he concluded.
On the need for arms and ammunitions, Mr Atiku said it is incumbent on the federal government to develop a more efficient means of sourcing for weapons and delivering them to the troops at the battlefront as “A situation where terrorists and criminals are better armed than our troops on the battlefront is intolerable”.
“The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, working in concert with primary mortgage institutions, ought to offer the men and women of our armed forces special concessionary mortgage loans so they can own homes,” he added.
