President Bola Tinubu’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Tope Ajayi, has clarified that Friday’s sweeping sacking of Nigeria’s service chiefs was a deliberate strategy to refresh the armed forces after two years of intense operations, not a knee-jerk response to coup rumours.
Dismissing speculation fueled by a viral Sahara Reporters story on October 19 alleging a plot by detained officers, Ajayi said: “This is not a reaction to any rumour of coups. He is exercising his powers. The service chiefs have done two years.”
The overhaul, appointing General Olufemi Oluyede as Chief of Defence Staff, Major-General W. Shaibu as Army Chief, Air Vice Marshal S.K. Aneke as Air Chief, and Rear Admiral I. Abbas as Naval Chief, takes immediate effect to “inject new direction, vision, vigour and energy” into the military tackling Boko Haram, banditry, IPOB, and kidnappings nationwide.
Ajayi highlighted the fiscal strain of security spending, which has hogged the largest budget chunk over 15 years, starving infrastructure like power, roads, broadband, education, and healthcare.
“The President wants to deal with this matter once and for all, so that the money going into defence expenditure will be better deployed to fund critical infrastructure,” he explained, underscoring Tinubu’s constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief.
“Every appointee of government… serves at the pleasure of the President. Nobody has a secure tenure. The only two people… who have a guarantee of tenure are the President and the Vice President.”
The Defence Headquarters had already debunked the coup tale as “false,” attributing officer probes to “indiscipline” and parade cancellation to admin reasons, but Ajayi’s words aim to quell lingering public doubts amid ongoing threats.