The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, has said that despite successes recorded in internal security operations across the country, “everysetback the Nigerian Army has had in its operations in recent times could be traced to “insufficient willingness to perform assigned tasks” by officers and soldiers.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai disclosed this on Tuesday at the Army Headquarters Transformational Leadership Workshop for middle level officers and soldiers, organised by the Department of Transformation and Innovation, at the Army Resource Centre, Abuja.
He said it was also due to “insufficient commitment to a common national/military course by those at the frontlines.”
“Many of those on whom the responsibility for physical actions against the adversary squarely falls are yet to fully take ownership of our common national or Service cause,” the army chief said.
He said leadership skill is core to the military profession; hence the emphasis placed by the Nigerian Army leadership to train personnel regularly to acquire leadership skill in order to “equip them with the capacity to control and care for members of their group from the lowest tactical to the highest operational level.”
The army chief said while various leadership training conducted were mainly designed to build capacities that enhance the intellectual and physical components of a fighting force: the ‘How’ we fight and the ‘what’ we fight with, there is a need for a professional Nigerian Army to “to build up and sustain its moral component: the ‘why’ we fight.’”
“This is because one general effect of modernization, globalization and ICT in the last few decades have seen a decline in nationalistic enthusiasm,” he said.
“Transformational leadership programmes are solely designed to imbue in leaders, the consciousness and respect for the unique value of their nation and institutions through which they render service to their nation: the Nigerian Army in our own case). This is done without undermining the imperatives of international cooperation or general inter-dependency of humans.
“The Army Headquarters Department of Transformation and Innovations Transformational Leadership Workshop is clearly and explicitly designed to teach/preach transformational leadership values to the next generation of Nigerian Army leaders (officers and soldiers). It would also establish a platform for subsequent mentoring of participants after the workshop, hence the theme has been aptly chosen as “lead, follow or get out of the way.
Earlier, Chief of Transformation and Innovation (Army) Maj. Gen. Felix Agugo, said the workshop, which has as its theme: “Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way”, would expose participants to a number of things in Nigeria and “clarify the imperatives of patriotic citizenship and national loyalty even in the face of globalization and emerging technologies.
“It will interrogate the understanding of service, sacrifice and honour among the participants and provide them with worthy examples to emulate,” he said. It will work out ways to institutionalize mentorship as a framework for raising leaders as well as the environment/tools necessary for mentorship in the Nigerian Army.
“The workshop will aim to highlight the values of communal dependency, communal surveillance and communal enforcement, as against the dangers of individualism and sycophancy (eye-service) among military professionals.”
