Addressing State House correspondents after a meeting between the president and service chiefs, the Permanent Secretary in the ministry of defence, Alhaji Ismail Aliyu said the president directed the security chiefs to liaise with the Police on taking over internal security.
According to the Permanent Secretary, the meeting with the security chiefs was to give them the opportunity to brief the president on the implementations of recent decisions reached on the fight against insurgency.
He also said that the military high command briefed the president on the relocation of the command centre to Maiduguri as directed by the president on the day of his inauguration.
He however assured Nigerians that the centre would soon take off.
“I also want to assure Nigerians that with what we have come out with from this meeting, we are very enthusiastic that the issue of Boko Haram will soon be over.
” He has given us hope that we will see peace and security in the very near future,” he added.
Ismaila said he was sure there would be a difference in the insurgency war with the common front that has been formed by Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Benin and Niger.
“We have all strategised and we are coming out with one type of strategy that we are going to address the Boko Haram with, unlike before,” he added.
He said the issue of sacking of service chiefs did not come up during the meeting.
On the absence of heads of some security agencies at the meeting, Ismaila said, “This is not a national security meeting, this is a briefing by the Ministry of Defence on the operationalisation of the Multi-National Joint Task Force and the relocation of the command control centre to the North-East, so it is something restricted to the ministry of Defence.”
Motorists had been facing harrowing experience on the Abuja-Keffi Road and some other roads following the military checkpoints mounted at strategic spots.