Insurgency: Equipping Military Personnel with Leadership Skills

Rebecca Ejifoma

Senior ranking officers, including lieutenant colonels and colonels from various formations, were among the 50 personnel recently equipped with leadership skills as a tool to counter insurgency in the country.

At the flag off of the three-day leadership development seminar, which was held at the Nigerian Army School of Finance and Administration (NASFA), the Commandant, Nigerian Army School of Signal, Apapa, Major General Olusegun Adesina urged participants to develop courage and embrace new leadership skills as a tool to counter insurgency in the country.

The 16th edition of the first phase of the Leadership Development Seminar 2021 was powered by NASFA and the Nigerian Institute of Management at Arakan Barracks, Apapa.

Citing the words of Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, the late COAS, Adesina recalled, “the words of General Attahiru came to my mind when he said ‘we need to control insurgency, otherwise insurgency will control us’.

“Thinking through this statement through the leadership development seminar is simply to use leadership skills to control insurgency.”

While noting that leadership is very key to them in the control of insurgency among other challenges and threats in the country, the commandant urged participants to develop courage.

His words: “I urge you all to develop courage. What you need at this stage is courage to take decisions, to accept responsibilities, and to do the right thing.”

For Adesina, leadership in the military is very intentional because it is a matter of life and death, which brings to fore the importance of this seminar.

According to the commandant, giving up is not an option in the country. “We must continue to strive to ensure that we do the right thing as military officers so that the transformation we desire in the Nigerian Army, in particular, and the nation at large will be achieved.”

In the words of the Commandant, Nigerian Army School of Finance and Administration, Brigadier General Felix Ohunyeye, the seminar was crafted to equip the personnel with the right skills, values, orientation to carry out their roles effectively and efficiently.

He emphasised: “this is to prepare you for your day-to-day assignments and enhance capacity building and career progress.”

Ohunyeye also lamented the loss of Lt. General Attahiru, and other senior officers and soldiers in the ill-fated air crash. “This calls for serious sober reflections by all personnel, and indeed we are in a state of mourning.

“This seminar is designed for officers from the rank of lieutenant colonels and above in view of the importance they play in policy formulation and implementation in the army.”

Speaking about the theme, ‘Leadership Excellence in the Digital Era’, Ohunyeye said the previous sessions aroused the interest of army headquarters and other formations and units of the Nigerian Army.

He highlighted: “This informed the wide formations and units represented here today who indicated interest in participating in subsequent editions of the seminar.”

This, he continued, no doubt underscores the importance of Nigerian Army’s place on the leadership effectiveness of their officers at the various levels of command.

The brigadier general further said the choice of the theme was a clear commitment to continue to strive towards achieving set objectives of the seminar.

“The theme also reveals that the army is not left behind in the development of leaders. Its cognitive abilities for management of human and material resources is worth managerial expertise,” he emphasised.

While encouraging personnel, he hinted that as leaders, “We need to improve our skills and develop managerial capacity for transformation which cannot be underestimated especially in this digital era”.

Acknowledging that the Nigerian Army constitutes an important component of the Nigerian society, Ohunyeye pointed out that it deserves confident, effective and efficient leaders that would translate ideas into action.

He noted: “Leadership in the army is imperative in the view of overcoming security challenges which has manifested in rampant techno-religious figures for ransom, banditry and increasing waves of terrorism across the country.”

Therefore, he harped on the need for decisive, skillful, and self-combinated leadership across all chains of command to equip the personnel.

Caption: (fourth from left) Major-General Olusegun Adesina; Commandant, Nigerian Army School of Signals (NASS); and (third left), the Commandant, Nigerian Army School of Finance and Administration (NASFA), Brigadier General Felix Ohunyeye, flanked by other senior personnel at the Leadership Development Seminar 2021

Schneider Electric Recommends Solutions to Spiked Cybercrime amid COVID-19 Pandemic

Chiamaka Ozulumba

Following the rising incidents of ransomware, phishing, and malware attacks, among others, Schneider Electric has urged energy companies, financial institutions, large industries, and micro small and medium (MSMEs) sized companies to be extra vigilant, and to deploy proven cybersecurity measures especially as the perpetrators of cybercrime have become more sophisticated.

This was made known at a just-concluded webinar organised by the Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry with the theme: “Cybersecurity and process automation in today’s business environment”.

In his presentation, Obukohwo Obukonise, a Senior Systems and Cybersecurity Engineer at Schneider Electric, said that “an attack is any attempt to expose, alter, disable, destroy, steal or gain information through unauthorised access to, or make unauthorised use of an asset” in computers and computer networks.

Citing AV-Test.org May 2021 reports, Obukonise said that malware attacks in the last 7 years, rose from 470 million in 2015 to 1.2 billion in 2021.

Also, between 2020 and 2021, he said that the number rose from 1.1 billion to 1.2 billion.

He attributed this rise to successes in previous years attacks where attackers made a fortune and are now investing the monies into developing more sophisticated malware.

He said, “Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are lots of people and organisations who are now online. People and organisations now rely on cloud computing and IOT resources for their business model.

” So, there are so many targets on the internet. It is now easier for attackers to be able to compromise their targets. They have many options. Many people are online now because it is the norm.”

On the reasons for cyberattacks, the Schneider Electric engineer identified hacktivism against government/organisation, disgruntled employees against employers, cyber warfare, politically motivated attacks, financial gains, identity theft, and stealing of trade secret, as some of the reasons.

He listed ransomware, Denial of Service, Zero-day exploit, cloud data breaches, man-in-the-middle, phishing, and malware, as most common cyberattacks.

“Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information or data, by impersonating oneself as a trustworthy entity in a digital communication,” Obukonise said.

On his part, Ajibola Akindele, the General Manager Sub-Saharan Africa, for Process Automation averred that Schneider Electric had assisted clients to create customised cybersecurity architecture solutions.

He said: “This isn’t strange to us and we always recommend solutions that fit into companies’ strategic plans.

“We have done it in Oil & Gas, Power, Utility, Manufacturing space and across several other industries. All that experience is being brought to bear now that cases have skyrocketed.

“It was Cybersecurity Ventures that predicted that cybercrime will annually cost the world US$10.5 trillion by 2025.

“Now, that’s larger than the damage caused by natural disasters in a year; it’s even larger than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined! So, this is serious and you don’t want to be caught unawares”.

For Energy Companies and large industries, he recommended the deployment of web application security and anti-phishing software; deployment of anomaly detection, network intrusion detection, next generation firewall and SIEM; deployment of web server and application server encryption, 2FA authentication; and organising cyber security training and awareness workshop, as part of measures against phishing.

He also noted that the MSMEs aren’t spared. While some may find it challenging to acquire the necessary cybersecurity architecture, others might not clearly see the need. Mere awareness and regular update of apps are starting points to being secure in the cyber space, he recommended.

In the same vein, Victor Lough, head of NESSA Cluster Cyber Business Consultant for Schneider Electric spoke to the theme: “Build an end to end cyber security strategy for greater protection” while making his presentation at the Cyber Security Academy Webinar.

He emphasised the importance of building a resilient team that would establish an in-depth defence mechanism which includes installation and implementation of an anomaly detection program.

Lough noted that the prowess of the Schneider Electric global team has seen them offer services to leading business and government organisations.

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