From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Elder statesman, Yusuf Abdulmalik has urged President Bola AhmedTinubu to create a special role for retired military officers in the fight against insurgency and banditry in the North.
Abdulmalik, a retired military Captain, made the suggestion during his 84th birthday anniversary held at Brigade Quarters in Kano, insisting that military retirees, with their vast military experience, are yet to be involved in the fight against insurgency and banditry in the North .
“If they organize us if we are motivated and if there is sharing of experiences between retirees and the serving officers, I am sure that there is going to be a lot of progress in this fight” he reasoned.
The octogenarian, who was also a former member of the Native Authority Police, condemned the recent killing of military officers in Delta State and urged the military authorities to spare nothing to fish out the culprits and get them to pay for their wickedness.
“An attack on any Nigeria soldier by anybody is an attack on the Nigeria nation as a whole” he declared in a chat with Sunday Sun.
Abdulmalik advocated for the recruitment and deployment of more police officers to the North in the light of the region’s population and land mass, arguing that most of the locations where these abductions occur are villages that are vulnerable, remote and hardly have any form of police presence in the areas.
“In a country with over 200 million people, how many police officers do we have in the first place? With more policemen and police stations in these remote villages, chances of kidnapping such large numbers of victims at a go, like we had in Kaduna and Sokoto States, will be almost zero” he argued.
He also pleaded with the administration to prioritize the welfare of military pensioners, saying that despite a number of engagements in the past, their condition is still challenging.