The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Sen. George Akume, has inaugurated the Presidential Committee on the National Threat Assessment and Five-Year Strategic Defence Operations Plan being coordinated by the Special Adviser to the President on Homeland Security, Major General Adeyinka A. Famadewa (Rtd).
In a release by the media aide to the SGF, Yomi Odunuga, Akume urged the committee to approach their assignment with the highest degree of professionalism, objectivity, urgency and patriotism.
The SGF gave the charge on Wednesday while inaugurating the Committee established by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to prepare a comprehensive National Threat Assessment and a rolling Five-Year Strategic Defence Operations Plan for the country.
He said the Committee had been entrusted with an assignment of considerable national importance and must deliver both documents within 90 days for the consideration and approval of the President.
According to the SGF, the Committee has been authorised to consult or co-opt representatives of other Ministries, Departments and Agencies whose specialised knowledge may be required in the course of its work.
He assured the Committee of the full support and cooperation of the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation in carrying out the assignment.
The SGF said the inauguration represented an important step in strengthening Nigeria’s capacity to understand, anticipate, plan for and respond effectively to an increasingly complex and evolving security environment.
He noted that contemporary security threats had become increasingly interconnected and adaptive, with the capacity to exploit gaps between institutions, jurisdictions and operational theatres.
While acknowledging the significant successes recorded by the Armed Forces and other security agencies across different theatres in recent months, the SGF said the government must move beyond responding to individual security challenges to establishing a system capable of anticipating threats, setting priorities, allocating resources rationally and sustaining operational momentum.
He said such a system must also ensure that national security objectives were consistently translated into measurable outcomes.
According to him, although heads of defence, intelligence and security agencies must retain the flexibility required to respond to immediate threats, their responses should be anchored on a shared national understanding of the security environment and a coherent short-, medium- and long-term strategy.
He observed that operational requirements were sometimes considered independently without sufficient reference to an agreed national threat assessment, clearly prioritised national objectives or a unified capability plan, a situation he said made coordination more difficult and limited the efficient deployment of scarce resources.
The SGF said the Committee was therefore expected to help establish a coherent strategic system in which Nigeria’s assessment of threats would determine operational objectives, while the objectives would, in turn, determine the capabilities required.
He added that capability requirements should inform expenditure, procurement, force development and industrial priorities.
“In simple terms, we must establish a clear path from threat to objective, from objective to capability, from capability to resource, and from resource to measurable outcome,” he said.
The SGF explained that the Committee was expected to produce two key documents — a National Threat Assessment and a Five-Year Strategic Defence Operations Plan.
He said the National Threat Assessment should provide the government with a comprehensive and objective understanding of Nigeria’s security landscape by identifying what threatens the country, why the threats matter, how they are likely to evolve, the consequences of failing to address them.