Army to improve psychological operations capabilities – Buratai

The Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt. Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai has reiterated the desire of the Nigerian Army (NA) to improve on the psychological warfare capabilities of the Nigerian Army.

He said, “We would make sure that we harness all the resources that we can muster to support the intelligence corps to improve on its psychological operations”.

Buratai stated this Monday, when the Nigerian Army 2019 participants of the course 27 at the  National Defence Collage (NDC) presented their joint research project titled “ Psychological Operation and Operational Efficiency in  Nigerian Army  : The Social Media in Perspective”   to the COAS at the Army headquarters Abuja.

Buratai who commended the team for coming up with far reaching conclusions and recommendations in their research assures that Army would take appropriate steps to improve on its psychological operations.

He said: “He said the paper is timely because the social media has both positive and negative impact. However, the negative travels wide and is shared more than the positive because the negative is always considered as news.

“This is the difference between our position in being patriotic and trying to defend our country at all cost and those that will always strive to ensure that they distracts and draw us back from carrying out our responsibilities.

“The paper has brought out some certain points and the contributions from the interactive sessions are quite elaborate as well as critical. They are expected to look at them, take note of all the observations as a way of amending their paper and putting them right.

“The recommendations are workable and I want to assure that once you make the corrections we would take appropriate steps to improve on our psychological operations.

“Definitely, the department of Civil Military Affairs is in the right position the Psychological Operation Command or Unit should be. This is more or less a covert operation and it should be dealt as such,” he said.

Earlier, Col. Thomson Ugiabe who presented the Course 27 group project said the threats of social in the many security challenges like the war against insurgency and secessionists groups in Nigeria is real.

He therefore called on the Nigerian Army to strengthen its institutional framework and formulate policies that would improve its social media presence and engagements.

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