Sambo Dasuki, a retired Colonel of the Nigerian Army, is the current National Security Adviser (NSA) to President Goodluck Jonathan. He was in London recently and addressed an audience.
This is the report culled from Reuters below:
Nigeria's campaign against Islamist Boko Haram insurgents is being hampered by "cowards" within the armed forces, its presidential security adviser said in a rare public signal of unhappiness in the military high command with the effort.
Boko Haram's bloody uprising to carve out a breakaway Islamic caliphate has taken much of Nigeria's northeast and poses the worst threat to Africa's most populous state and biggest energy producer and at least three of its neighbours.
Boko Haram claimed a Jan. 3 attack on the town of Baga that killed scores, possibly hundreds, of civilians and left the jihadists in control of the headquarters of a regional multinational force including troops from Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
Nigerian soldiers fled the area after Baga was overrun. It was the latest in a recent series of Boko Haram successes that has cast doubt on the commitment of some in the Nigerian military, and 22 officers including a brigadier general are on trial over alleged sabotage in the war effort.
"Unfortunately we have a lot of cowards. We have people who use every excuse in this world not to fight," Sambo Dasuki, the top security adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, told an audience at the Chatham House think-tank in London.
But, he stressed, "there is no high-level conspiracy within the army not to end the insurgency."
It is highly unusual for senior Nigerian security officials to comment on the counter-insurgency campaign, especially at the level of Dasuki, but it pointed to discontent within the security establishment with the conduct of the fight.
Dasuki denied that the army was under-equipped, as critics have asserted, calling this an "excuse." He said reinforcements had been sent in to retake Baga, something he hoped would be completed soon.
Boko Haram's bloody uprising to carve out a breakaway Islamic caliphate has taken much of Nigeria's northeast and poses the worst threat to Africa's most populous state and biggest energy producer and at least three of its neighbours.
Boko Haram claimed a Jan. 3 attack on the town of Baga that killed scores, possibly hundreds, of civilians and left the jihadists in control of the headquarters of a regional multinational force including troops from Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
Nigerian soldiers fled the area after Baga was overrun. It was the latest in a recent series of Boko Haram successes that has cast doubt on the commitment of some in the Nigerian military, and 22 officers including a brigadier general are on trial over alleged sabotage in the war effort.
"Unfortunately we have a lot of cowards. We have people who use every excuse in this world not to fight," Sambo Dasuki, the top security adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, told an audience at the Chatham House think-tank in London.
But, he stressed, "there is no high-level conspiracy within the army not to end the insurgency."
It is highly unusual for senior Nigerian security officials to comment on the counter-insurgency campaign, especially at the level of Dasuki, but it pointed to discontent within the security establishment with the conduct of the fight.
Dasuki denied that the army was under-equipped, as critics have asserted, calling this an "excuse." He said reinforcements had been sent in to retake Baga, something he hoped would be completed soon.
There's more on the report. Read it here
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