Maiduguri: Enemies of national security are from within - CDS

…as Military adopts community-driven combat strategy

…highlights deployment of high-tech drones by insurgents

By Austine Agbo Emmanuel

The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Olufemi Oluyede, has issued a stark warning regarding the protracted insurgency in Nigeria’s North-East, identifying internal complicity and community-level collaboration as the primary engines sustaining the 15-year conflict.

Speaking after an intensive four-hour security summit in Maiduguri, the Defense chief sounded a fresh alarm over enemies within, asserting that the military’s efforts are being systematically undermined by individuals embedded within the very societies most ravaged by violence.

The meeting, which featured the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Waidi Shuaibu, and the Theatre Commander of Operation Hadin Kai, Major General Abdulsalam Abubakar, focused on the evolving complexity of counter-insurgency.

General Oluyede revealed that intelligence reports increasingly point to a disturbing trend: many of the insurgents responsible for recent atrocities originate from the local communities they attack.

This internal dimension, he noted, grants terrorists a strategic advantage, allowing them to exploit intimate terrain knowledge and familial social networks to evade security forces.

Citing a recent operational discovery in Kukawa, the CDS disclosed that troops conducted post-attack clearance only to find wounded terrorists being shielded and hidden within the civilian population.

This development underscores the growing difficulty security forces face in distinguishing between innocent victims and active collaborators.

Oluyede emphasized that the military cannot decisively end the war through kinetic force alone if communities continue to provide a human shield for criminal elements.

He urged the residents of Borno and Yobe States to take definitive ownership of the struggle, stressing that active intelligence sharing is the only path to a permanent ceasefire.

Beyond the challenge of human infiltration, the CDS revealed that insurgents are modernizing their arsenal, with a marked increase in the deployment of drones and surveillance technology during ambushes.

In response, the Nigerian military is intensifying its own technological capabilities, deploying advanced drone systems to enhance aerial targeting and tactical coordination.