By Nathaniel Zacchaeus, Abuja
President Bola Tinubu yesterday assured members of the Armed Forces and other intelligence agencies of his administration’s commitment to their welfare.
He also pledged to provide other administrative and logistics requirements to enhance their productivity to enable them to carry out their mandate.
He challenged them to deploy the use of Artificial Intelligence in their reports gathering.
Tinubu, according to a statement from the Senate President’s Media Office, gave the assurance in the text of his speech read at the inauguration of the headquarters of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Abuja.
The statement explained that Tinubu was represented on the occasion by the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio.
Tinubu said, “I assure you along with the entire armed forces of Nigeria that I will sustain the provision of the welfare, training, and other administrative and logistics requirements to enhance your productivity and to enable you to carry out your mandate.
“I am persuaded that a conducive and well-equipped intelligence outfit would positively impact on the overall intelligence-gathering effort, processing, and timely dissemination to various arms of the military.”
Tinubu commended the present and future leadership of the Defence Intelligence Agency for seeing to the completion of the project.
He said, “Let me at this juncture, commend the leadership of the DIA past and present for conceiving and completing this beautiful edifice.
“It is my sincere belief that out of this magnificent office, structure shall emerge innovations and creativity in the field of intelligence gathering that would keep Nigeria ahead of its foes and make our country and people safer.
“Since I assumed the leadership of our great nation a year ago, I have made the task of securing every inch of our country a topmost priority.
“I have no intention of relenting on this sacred duty. I am thus delighted to be here today to inaugurate the headquarters of the DIA; a key agency in our security architecture that primarily provides intelligence to our armed forces and Ministry of Defence. Our country is bedevilled by myriads of security challenges across the six geo-political zones.
“We are not only faced with physical threats, but also economic and digital threats. In terms of digital threats, we are all aware of the capacity of criminals, terrorists, and cyber bandits to exploit advances in technologies to undermine any nation including our own.
“This is why security tops the 8-point agenda of our administration. In our bid to combat physical threats, we deploy our armed forces in all 36 states of the federation to assist the civil authorities.
“You have to contend with behind your computers, using if necessary AI, which enables our military to know the position of our enemies or the games they are up to and of course, you will do that in secret.
“I know that with each passing day, the adversaries wish that our commitment in responding to various threats would wane, our optimism dim and our courage evaporated.
“Our adversaries got our DNA wrong. The underlying spirit of Nigerians cannot and will never yield to the forces of darkness. You have all left me in no doubt that you have no other higher obligations than to serve this nation of ours, he declared.”
