As General Musa assumes duty

President Bola Tinubu on December 4, 2025 swore in the immediate former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Gwabin Musa (rtd.) as Minister of Defence, replacing ex-Governor Mohammed Badaru Abubakar who resigned his post on “health grounds”.

Sacked as CDS by President Tinubu on October 24, 2025, his ministerial nomination was announced on Tuesday December 2. On Wednesday, Musa was screened and confirmed by the Senate.

Daily Trust joins well-meaning Nigerians in congratulating the widely respected and accomplished Infantry commander on his appointment. While we note that he came in with unprecedented endorsements and support from stakeholders and ordinary Nigerians, we advise him to work to rebuild public confidence in the defence and security system and their abilities to secure key and vulnerable communities that are now living under terrorism, banditry, communal attacks, kidnapping and other forms of violence.

We also believe that in Musa, Nigeria finally has as minister of defence, a former top military commander with admirable record that draws immediate obeisance from the CDS and service chiefs. This is because, the choice has resolved the lingering issues of personal capacities of past ministers of defence as he is not new to military doctrine, joint operations, service rivalries, procurement cycles, and Armed Forces institutional culture.

We, therefore, call on President Tinubu to lead in the institutional reform of the military sector to ensure that the minister and even the CDS have real statutory authority over the military. The minister’s office should cease to be ceremonial and operate effectively in the chain of command as the representative of the president in the day-to-day running of the Armed Forces.

Towards this, the president should stop dealing directly with the CDS and service chiefs, but through established command channel of the minister of defence. This has worked before during the tenure of Lt. Gen. TY Danjuma (rtd) as minister (1999-2003) where President Olusegun Obasanjo dealt with the military through the office of minister of defence.

Any attempt to continue with the present system where CDS and service chiefs directly deal with the president will automatically undermine the minister’s office and inadvertently sabotage civilian oversight of the military while weakening their institutional accountability. In fact, it clearly violates the principle of civilian control and proper chain of command.

We, therefore, urge the president to go further and fix the current structural dysfunction and clearly amend and define the Armed Forces Act as well as delineating the powers of the minister. Under General Danjuma, the reporting line was president and commander-in-chief to the minister of defence, then the CDS as coordinating head of the service chiefs. After all, the minister represents the president in army, navy and air councils and as chairman of all tri-service and other service institutions.

Indeed, Musa has the daunting assignment to confront and defeat the widespread terrorists and bandits factions across the nation especially in the Northern region just as he coordinates the maintenance of troop morale, provision of optimal equipment across the theatres of operation, intelligence coordination, and non-kinetic strategies like community engagements.

The new minister should also lead in dismantling the financial lifelines and networks that sustain non-state actors working to cut off their weapon supply channels. No doubt, his recent operational command at the highest level of the nation’s military as CDS with deep knowledge of Nigeria’s security terrain will be tested. Before then, he garnered battlefield experience as Sector 3 Commanders of both Operation Lafiya Dole and Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) in the Lake Chad Basin.

In 2021, he was appointed Theatre Commander of Operation Hadin Kai (OPHK), the military’s major counter-terrorism operation in the North East. He subsequently served as Commander of the Nigerian Army Infantry Corps before his appointment as Chief of Defence Staff in 2023, a position he held until October 2025.

With these backgrounds, General Musa should inject renewed discipline, intelligence-driven operations and improved coordination across security agencies and bring greater professionalism to the tasks of the civilian staff of the ministry.

In addition, the present situation whereby the Ministry of Defence Headquarters is filled with routine officers from cadres from other ministries should be replaced with a new system where it’s the real operational centre for executing defence policy through professionals especially strategists, planners, and analysts. This will enable the ministry conform to global best practices where the minister is the real civilian boss of the military.

We also caution that coming from a non-partisan background, General Musa should refuse to fall into past traps of leveraging insecurity as part of scoring political points. He should avoid all political rhetoric and actions but insist on addressing issues professionally and passionately, on merit and on sound operational logic.

Moreover, President Tinubu should muster the political will and provide the necessary backing to lead the implementation of reforms needed to deliver Nigeria from the claws of terrorists and bandits. Musa cannot deliver on his words, commitments and promises without the full support of his employer.

This is very important because with the emergence of the new minister, Nigerians expect the days of weak leadership, divided command, and political meddling in the defence sector to be a thing of the past. He should lead the nation out of the present failed policy of containment of terrorism and banditry.

Most importantly, he should realise that beyond open celebrations of his appointment by many Nigerians, some citizens still believe that he wasn’t quite successful in defeating insecurity during his tenure as CDS. So, his first assignment is to win over the sceptics while earning the confidence of all those who hailed his new appointment.

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