President Bola Tinubu has unveiled a new office complex for the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and assured that Nigeria will prevail against the adversaries undermining its peace.
Tinubu, who was represented by the president of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, at the commissioning of DIA Headquarters in Abuja, said his confidence was anchored on the unwavering commitment of members of the Armed Forces of Nigeria and the intelligence agencies, including the DSS, NIA, and of course the DIA.
He said that DIA was a crucial agency in the country‘s security architecture that primarily provides intelligence to the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence.
“Since we became an independent nation about 64 years ago, except for the period of the civil war spanning 1967 all the way to 1970, at no time have we been faced by multiple threats than in recent times.
“We not only face physical threats but also economic and digital threats. In our bid to combat physical threats, we deploy the armed forces in almost all the states to assist the civil authorities.
“Some of the other threats, you will have to contend with behind your computers using, if necessary, artificial intelligence, enabling our military to know the position of the enemies or the games they are up to,” he said.
Tinubu said it was not a coincidence that the government had made deliberate efforts to ensure the general upliftment of the DIA which was created in 1986.
He promised to sustain the provisional welfare, training and other administrative and logistics requirements to the agency and the entire armed forces to enhance their productivity while carrying out their mandates.
President Tinubu said a conducive and well-equipped intelligence outfit would positively impact the overall intelligence gathering efforts, processing, and timely dissemination to the various arms of the military to prevent surprises.
He commended the agency’s past and present leadership for conceiving and completing the edifice.
Earlier, the Chief of Defence Intelligence (CDI), Maj.-Gen. Emmanuel Undiandeye, said the agency had diligently carried out its assigned responsibilities of intelligence gathering and provision of timely and appropriate actions for military and strategic national decision-making since its establishment.
Undiandeye emphasised intelligence‘s place as a critical tool of statecraft that provides the necessary foreknowledge to protect the nation from surprise attacks, either from hostile foreign military or internal challenges.
He said that certain factors and conditions, such as a conducive working environment for the system operators, were required to allow the agency to function effectively.
The CDI said the completion and inauguration of the agency‘s headquarters marked a significant milestone in the journey towards enhancing its performance in intelligence provisioning for better national defence and security.
