'Why insecurity is not going away' - Service chiefs

Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, yesterday revealed that Boko Haram members held in prisons across the country still carry out their criminal operations through the help of some prison warders.

General Musa made the disclosure, yesterday, during the sectoral debate with service chiefs organized by the House of Representatives at plenary in Abuja yesterday.

At the parley, the service chiefs gave reasons the security agencies appeared to be under-performing, their challenges and how to overcome and secure the country.

The service chiefs present included Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, General Christopher Musa; Chief of Army Staff, COAS, Lt-General Taoreed Lagbaja; Chief of Air Staff, CAS, Air Marshal Hassan Abubakar; Chief of Naval Staff, CNS, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla; and Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun.

The House had rescheduled the meeting from last week to today after the security chiefs could not appear for the debate in person.

Boko Haram plan operations from prisons with aid of warders
According to Musa, in the North-East, while debriefing some of the Boko Haram elements, they confessed how from the prisons they could plan operations and pass funds to the field through the help of some prison warders.

He said: “They passed funds across and we asked how. They told us they use some of the warders. We are not saying all of them are bad, but they use some of the warders’ accounts to transfer money and the deal is anybody whose account it is transferred shared it 50-50. Those are the challenges.”

Speaking further on purchase of equipment, Musa lamented that the high dollar rate had hampered the purchase of relevant equipment needed to fight insecurity.

According to him, all the items procured are bought with hard currency, none in naira, and that most times when funds are converted, only very little could be bought.

His words: “We don’t produce what we need in Nigeria and if you do not produce what you need, that means you are at the beck and call of the people that produce these items.

“For example, during the last regime, about $1 billion was set aside for defence procurement. Out of that amount, over $600 million was for the procurement of aircraft. So, the whole money had gone.

“So many times when people see that funds are being released to the armed forces, they think it is so much but by the time you convert them to dollars you do not get much.

“One precision missile for our drone costs $5,000. So imagine how many we would be able to use and how many we can procure. So, those are the challenges.”