The Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor, has disclosed that Nigerian soldiers were not trained to fight asymmetric warfare, stressing the need to acquire new skills in order to be able to tackle the security challenges across the country.
Peoples Gazette reported Mr Irabor as making the disclosure Wednesday night during a dinner held in honour of officers of the Senior Course 43 of Command and Staff College Jaji, Kaduna State.
The CDS said: “Our involvement in containing asymmetric security threats in the past few years has highlighted the need to acquire new operational capability of the Armed Forces of Nigeria to deal with emergent threats.
“As you are aware, asymmetric warfare encourages the use of non-traditional military tactics, for which our previous training and operational doctrines were not well suited.
“Accordingly, we are developing new capabilities in intelligence and surveillance, which are critical for staying ahead of terrorists and insurgents, and other criminal elements in the society,” he added.
Mr Irabor explained that the use of Special Forces Units had proved to be critical in asymmetric warfare because of several unique capabilities it could bring into combat.
The CDS further noted that the armed forces would continue to review their training curriculum to accommodate new platforms, maintaining that their involvement in managing internal crises required a complex interplay of factors that military and security practitioners needed to focus on.
He pointed out that a major determinant in winning an asymmetric war was for troops to understand the dynamics that defined the crises to make decisions effectively.
The participants of Senior Course 43 underwent 11 months of training at the college.
