No room for failure, CoAS tells officers

The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt.-Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, has charged officers of the Nigerian Army to maintain near zero margin for operational failure in their various leadership positions.

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Lagbaja gave the charge at the Graduation of the Leadership and Strategic Studies Course 2/2023 organized by the Nigerian Army Resource Centre (NARC), on Friday in Abuja.

He said the course, which is both a professional and an academic programme, was unique in that it was a career course and also serves as a solid preparation the Nigerian army direct regular officers for their future assignments in and out of uniform.

According to him, the participants have no excuse to fall short of expectations in the field as those who graduated last course have proven beyond reasonable doubt that the course package is rich and worth the investment.

The COAS said the course was a senior level programme designed to give the officers, and others found suitable to undertake the course, a mirror of what their Regular Combatant colleagues go through at the National Defence College.

He said the experience of the past 11 months was expected to have enhanced the participants’ capacity in policy analysis, argumentation, and evaluation and provided them with advanced functional and robust research skills in leadership and strategic studies, amongst others.

According to him, the Nigerian army has, in recent years, made a deliberate effort to significantly increase its investments in developing operational and strategic level leaders required to think out of the box and interrogate issues sufficiently and objectively to make informed decisions.

“Moreover, the political and economic reality of present day Nigeria requires senior leaders to be ingenious in employing available resources – human and material, to fulfil operational objectives.

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“As strategic level staff that you will first operate as before some of you get promoted to the policy level, you must be in tune with the reality of your internal and external environment and understand the interrelationships between factors and elements/constituents of both.

“Any gap in your understanding of how the army as a system functions within and relates with other systems in the larger Nigeria system is a recipe for operational disaster, which will be unacceptable to the Nigerian people.

“This, therefore, leaves you with near zero margin for failure,”  he said.

Lagbaja said that  an efficient military could only be built over time with defined policy, focused investment, and consistent training to enhance capacity and capability for today and tomorrow’s operational demands.

This belief, he said had shaped army’s design for continuous training of its personnel at all levels and the crafting of his command philosophy.

He reiterated that the Army Headquarters would continue to improve the facility at the centre while equally enhancing the welfare of staff and participants.

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The Director General, NARC,  retired Maj.-Gen. Garba Wahab, said the course was designed to provide a level playing ground for all operational level officers of the army.

He said that emphasis had been on combatant courses, adding that the course would help to raise the level of awareness, training, and proficiency of the direct regular  officers,

According to him, tackling the security challenges is not a sole agency’s responsibility, it is everybody’s job but they must have an open mind to want to relate with everybody who matters.

“They must take everybody wherever they find themselves and must find a way of relating with the locals, getting people to come along for them to believe in whatever they are doing,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that NARC also graduated the  Leadership Development Skills Course 10 for non-commissioned officers, junior and mid-level officers.

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