Daily Trust Editorial, Tuesday November 4, 2025
On October 24, 2025, President Bola Tinubu effected mid-term sweeping reshuffle of Nigeria’s top military hierarchy, appointing General Olufemi Oluyede (Chief of Defence Staff), Lieutenant General Waidi Shaibu (Chief of Army Staff), Vice Admiral Idi Abbas (Chief of Naval Staff) and Air Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke (Chief of Air Staff). He retained Lieutenant General Emmanuel Parker Undiandeye as Chief of Defence Intelligence.
On October 29, their appointments were confirmed by the Senate while House of Representatives confirmed them on October 30 in accordance with Section 18 (1) of the Armed Forces Act. On October 31, they were decorated with their new ranks by the President.
Daily Trust congratulates them on their appointments and new ranks but reminds them that they are confronting old multifaceted threats ranging from the ongoing battle against terrorists, bandits, farmer-herder clashes mainly in the Northern region, with oil theft and piracy in the Niger Delta, to secessionist violence especially the South East.
We implore them to study President Tinubu’s charge at their decoration that they should carry out their duties with patriotic zeal.
“Nigerians expect results, not excuses. I also urge you to be innovative, pre-emptive, and courageous. Let’s stay ahead of those who seek to threaten our peace… We must be decisive and proactive… Work with other security agencies and defeat this enemy once and for all. We need to clean them up, clear them out. I promise to provide all the support you need to get the job done,” he said.
While we agree with the President that this should herald a new dawn in Nigeria’s long battle against insecurity, we urge him to go beyond the issuance of the Presidential matching orders and insist on a target date to stop terrorism, banditry and other criminals’ activities across the nation. The deadline must be monitored and enforced.
Second, the President must deploy a new political will to confront the vested interests profiting from the insecurity and cut off all political interference crippling needed operational decisions. Towards this, we demand that he exercises fresh moral courage which shields the CDS and service chiefs and their field commanders from power brokers or their proxies.
Already, it is an indictment on the country’s political leadership alongside those of defence and security forces that insecurity has lingered for so long with ungoverned spaces where vast communities are under the control of non-state actors. The new CDS and service chiefs must confront, reclaim and secure these spaces especially areas where government authority is weak at best or absent generally.
The defence helmsmen should know they don’t have the luxury of honeymoon as Nigerians demand and deserve to see measurable results. Also, the era of rhetorical beatitudes of phrases in place of verifiable reductions of terror attacks, killings and safety on the highways are gone. Nigeria would never be secured through proclamations, propaganda or mere changing the musical chairs but with new transformative strategy which builds on old successes while avoiding past mistakes.
Therefore, we urge them to operationalise synergy among themselves and their commanders while working in concert with other paramilitary, intelligence agencies and police in order to align their objectives through seamless collaboration.
We also urge them to embrace and rely more heavily on real-time intelligence gathering and technology to improve multi-domain and multi-agency operations through sharing the intelligence across military and actionable paramilitary agencies like Nigeria Police and Department of State Services (DSS).
The deployment of such advanced surveillance systems as drones, satellite imagery and AI analytics and even human intelligence (HUMINT) networks to track terrorists and bandit movements and financing, targeting high-value individuals will help monitor enemy communications and movements in real-time. This has become imperative as the terrorists have started launching coordinated drone attacks on multiple military and other strategic bases.
Nigerians expect them to immediately deny all non-state actors every operational freedom while disrupting and eliminating their safe havens and hideouts. This must entail pre-emptive strikes which move operational guidelines to proactive offensive missions that wipes out and neutralises any threat on sight, while exercising full domination of all joint operational areas (JOAs). There should also be surveillance and disruption of the possible linkages between local extremist groups and their foreign counterparts through heightened regional security coordination.
The Nigerian military has rich history as a dominant power. The 2025 Global Firepower (GFP) Index ranks the nation’s military as the third most powerful in Africa and 31st globally. And this same military summarily defeated rebels through enforcement of peace in Liberia (1990–1997), Sierra Leone (1997–2000) under the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) multinational peacekeeping force.
Daily Trust implores the CDS and service chiefs to rise up to the plate and show their battlefield prowess by defeating all non-state actors across the country. They must also understand that the fight they’re entrusted to finish has taken too long and it is their onerous duty to bear down on them and defeat them. This is the time to show they earned their esteemed appointments and new ranks. They should learn from their predecessors who came, saw and left with unfulfilled security outcomes. Let their tenure be remembered as a turning point in Nigerians’ desire to live in a nation where peace reigns.
Most importantly, they must ensure that under their tenures, military shortcomings which resulted in ambushes, gunfights, suicide bombings and raids on bases including daily terror attacks on civilians stop. Nigeria’s territorial integrity must be safeguarded in the real sense of it. And providence has thrust them on the driving seats to this realization. Failure is not an option.