President Bola Tinubu?s December 2025 deadline for the armed forces to end insecurity in Nigeria is a fresh approach to the duties of his office as Commander-in-Chief. It is different from the usual ?marching orders? that no longer means anything, even to the military and police personnel.

In most cases, the armed forces and police appear to wait to be issued these ?marching orders? to avoid unwittingly stepping on the wrong toes. We saw how a former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Azubuike Ihejirika, was relieved of his appointment by former President Goodluck Jonathan after dealing crushing blows on Boko Haram in 2013. Jonathan, with eyes on his re-election in 2015, had to dismiss Ihejirika and other Service Chiefs following unsupported allegations by some Northern leaders and Amnesty International, AI, that the military was too brutal and often targeted ?innocent youth.?

Throughout his eight years, President Muhammadu Buhari met with his Service Chiefs every other week, with ?marching orders?. Boko Haram spread from the North-East to the North-Central, while the bandits took hold of the North-West. Herdsmen terrorists swept through the ungoverned spaces all over the country without Buhari?s government recognising them as security threats.

If Tinubu is resolute with the target he has set for the military, and ready to back them up with unflinching political will, we are likely to make giant strides against insecurity by December 2025, even if we do not score 100 per cent.

Target-setting and achievement assessment are core strategies routinely deployed by businesses and private sector organisations for results. They allow for concrete measurement of success and failures and enable managements to re-strategise for greater achievement. Tinubu is taking his private sector orientation into government. This is different from Buhari?s style of giving people jobs and abdicating leadership, which encouraged indolence, corruption and pursuit of personal agendas by officials.

With this target, the media and the public will watch to see the result by year end. We all have been handed the basis to judge performance.

Along with this, the military under Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, General Christopher Musa, has ramped up regular briefings of the media on progress being made in the front lines, as well as problems being encountered. We call on the military authorities to accredit defence correspondents to report from the theatres of action to validate these briefings as done in other countries.

We also remind the president that merely giving targets is not enough. Funding, equipment and welfare must also be boosted. Performance must have consequences. Postings should be based on officers? track records, not their ethnic backgrounds. More should be done to dismantle terrorists? support infrastructure, protection and financing.

We wait to assess the military?s target performance under Tinubu by December. (Vanguard Editorial)

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