The immediate past Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gabriel Olonisakin said that he foresaw invasion of Nigeria’s forests by bandits following a study he conducted.
He stated this while speaking at a thanksgiving service held in his honour in Ode Ekiti, his hometown in Gbonyin LGA, Ekiti state, disclosing that he conducted a study which revealed that bandits would invade forests.
The former defence chief said the military adopted futuristic intelligence to address insecurity, adding that they identified 14 security challenges and developed strategies that bordered heavily on intelligence gathering to tackle such attacks.
“We went through the storm and came up with those babies of necessities. The system did not have those structures to do what we were facing, so we had to come up with ad hoc arrangements like the platforms we created with the intelligence agencies,” NAN quoted him to have said.
“So, I encouraged the officers under me to add value wherever they found themselves. And we always think outside the box, because if you don’t do that, you might not add value and more importantly, to give the system their best.
“That was why we were coming up with strategies on a monthly basis to address the challenges we were facing on security threats, ranging from terrorism, insurgency, to theft.
of our forests by bandits we are experiencing at the moment, I saw it years back. I did a kind of study and I knew that our next target was going to be the forests.
“We also made sure we encouraged a lot of research and development in the army formation. So, we did our best for this nation in terms of resolving this pathetic insecurity issue — that I can boldly say.”