The Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt Gen Tukur Yusuf Buratai has said that the Nigerian Army operations are intelligence driven and that, the ability of troops to adequately and professionally respond to these security challenges depends on reliable intelligence which is partly on the contingent ability to communicate with the local populace. He stated this during the graduation ceremony of Indigenous Languages Proficiency Course 6\19 on Friday 25 October 2019 at the Nigerian Army Resource Centre (NARC) Conference Hall A, Abuja.
The representative of COAS Maj Gen MS Yusuf in his remarks posited that, the Indigenous Languages Proficiency Course is an initiative of Lieutenant General TY Buratai to make officers and soldiers of the Nigerian Army (NA) proficient in two indigenous languages other than their mother tongue. “Enemy will use the most effective weapons within its reach to elude our strengths and take advantage of our weaknesses. One of these weapons will be information“, he said. Hence, the course was designed to adequately equip NA troops to operate seamlessly in the domestic security environment, thereby making them effective and efficient. He said, the aim of the course was to break the communication barriers imposed by the multi-lingual nature of Nigeria.
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He further, admonished the graduands to see the certification as a learning process, so that overtime, they would progressively improve on it. He enjoined the graduands to continue to recertify themselves adequately, because failure to re-certify will result in decertification and loss of benefits derived from the language proficiency.
The Director General of NARC, Major General GA Wahab (rtd) in his welcome address expressed his profound gratitude to the COAS for his exemplary leadership. He explained that the Languages Course was conceived to key into the COAS’ vision to make officers and soldiers of the NA proficient in foreign and indigenous languages.
General Wahab said, the cardinal objectives of the Language Course was to position the NARC based on exigencies confronting the NA and the emphasis was heightened by the plethora of threats, necessitating the empowerment of officers and soldiers to communicate in indigenous languages for easy penetration and accessibility in operational areas.
He explained that the method of instruction adopted were lectures, use of video clips, slides, pictures and small group work. He congratulated all the participants for successfully completing the course. The highpoints of the event were the presentation of playlets by the groups in the three indigenous languages in Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba and the presentation certificates to the graduands by the representative of COAS, Major Gen MS Yusuf.
