By, Ibrahim Dahiru Danfulani
The Nigerian Ambassador to Benin Republic, and former Chief of Army Staff, His Excellency Lieutenant General Tukur Yusufu Buratai (rtd), has advocated for continuous training among the Armed Forces of Nigeria as panacea for excellence in strategic leadership. The ambassador made the assertion today at the National Defence College Nigeria while presenting a lecture on Strategic Leadership to the participants of Course 30/2021 of the college.
Durning the lecture he enumerated qualities of a good strategic leader which includes emphasized the need for weight control policy to ensure that officers and soldiers are physically, medically and mentally fit to enable them to perform their jobs optimally.
General Buratai call for exposition of officers and soldiers to training courses both at home and abroad, inspiring a shared vision, to inculcated core values; ethics and standards to improve the performance of the Nigerian Army.
According to him, when you talked about Strategic leadership, so many things comes into mind especially as regards those could be referred Strategic leaders. A Strategic leader is the one that has experience, as stated by General Douglas McArthur.
The lecture which was specifically for the participants of National Defence College Nigeria Course 30/202, he call for the need to improved on innovation as it the key in order to achieve the vision and goals set to be achieved in every task, “You must develop the capacity of your officers and men. It would help if you were versatile and adaptive. Every leader aims to get the job done, through exemplary leadership” he said.
He also added that “We have made Nigeria Army a Modern Army, we have made Nigeria Army to be professional by introducing many Infrastructures like the Nigeria Army Warfare Research. My regrets is our not discovering our Initiative of MRAP and many war instruments but we thank God as it has been introduced”In his response, the commandant, Rear. Admiral Bashir said that General Buratai has unique and practical leadership worthy of emulation. The commandant said that because of these qualities, as such General Buratai had been selected as one of the strategic leaders to be studied in the college.
Members of his entourage includes Major General Adeniyi Oyebade (Rtd), Major Gen Iliya Abba (Rtd), Brig Gen Sani Usman Kukasheka (Rtd) and Ibrahim Dahiru Danfulani.
