Molly Kilete, Abuja
The Nigerian Army has established a Cyber Warfare Command to combat terrorism, banditry and other attacks by criminal groups in the country.
The cyber warfare command, the Daily Sun gathered, is charged with the responsibility of monitoring, defending and attack subversive elements in the cyberspace.
It will also be expected to provide real-time information to fighting troops and commanders in the field from the highly sophisticated equipment so far installed to checkmate the counter terrorism fight, herdsmen/militia killings, armed banditry, pipeline vandalism among others.
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The Command will also monitor the Nigerian Army’s networks and advise Field Commanders on how to use the newly procured computer based weapons systems which has already been inducted into the Theatre of Operations.
It will also have capacity to protect the Nations Critical Infrastructures.
The Command, which already has an acting Commander is headquartered, in Abuja, has a unit in each of the geo-political zones of the country.
A total of 150 officers and soldiers trained in Information Communication Technology (ICT) and selected from the various Corps in the Nigerian Army have since been inducted into the newly established corps.
The Daily Sun gathered that plans are underway to send more officers and soldiers to the United stated of America, United Kingdom and Russia for further training.
Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai had, at a media briefing, in Abuja, last week, announced the establishment and take off of the cyber warfare command with an acting commander in the rank of a Brigadier-General.
Similarly, Gen Buratai had also, at a press briefing, held sometime in November 2016, announced his plans to set up a virtual command to monitor terrorists activities in the cyberspace having concluded that the 5th generation of warfare is Information Warfare.
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The Daily Sun also gathered that the Command which has been in the pipeline of the Army authorities finally came into existence few days after President Muhammadu Buhari directed service chiefs to step up their and forestall the rising insecurity with the incessant killings and attacks on innocent persons across the country.
To take charge of the cyberspace and counter all assaults of the criminal, the Nigerian army has acquired state of the art technical equipment. Newly procured servers are currently being installed and configured by experts from IBM computers to make them suitable for tracking, monitoring and carry out ‘Distributed Denial of Service’ to criminals, terrorist and subversive elements.