‘Hub of military operations lies in young officers’

The commandant of the Nigerian Defence Academy, Major-General Adeniyi Oyebade, says the hub of military operations lies in young officers.

He said they should be impacted with the required skills to enhance their leadership capacities.

Presenting his paper titled “Prerequisites for a Successful Military Career: My Personal Experience” at the opening ceremony of the Career and Peace Support Operation Package for Army cadets of 65 regular course (Army) at the academy yesterday in Kaduna, he said young officers had to develop leadership traits to help them overcome challenges when deployed to the field.

He said: “The military is deployed all over the country and the hub of all military operations lies in in the young officers who are at the tactical level, we need to teach them the skills that are required of them in terms of their intellectual capacity, physical development, compulsion for their subordinates, developing their leadership skills and most importantly, subordination to the democratic dispensation, subordination to the constitution as exemplified by the president and all the constitutional arms of government.”

He charged the graduating cadets to learn financial discipline, saying: “If you do not manage your finances properly, you cannot lead your troops because wherever you are given resources, the first thing you think of is how to short change your troops, how to short change the nation. Money will always come, so it important young officers understand financial management as a prerequisite for sound leadership.”

He also asked them to use core values of the Armed Forces, traits of effective leadership, rudiments of becoming a successful leader and personal experiences to excel in their chosen careers.

He called on the graduating cadets to be loyal to their subordinates as they will in-turn have trust in them.

The commandant also advised them to leave the army if they could not be loyal to the Nigerian constitution.