The Deputy Speaker of House of Representatives, Benjamin Okezie Kalu, has recommended the establishment of a military space command.
He urged the Federal Government to take the surveillance and security of the country’s space seriously.
He urged that such command be headed by a Service Chief to be referred to as the Chief of Space Staff, as it was time Nigeria moved from the usual mechanisms of fighting insurgencies and other forms of Insecurity and took the battle into space to achieve unusual results.
This, he said, would go a long way to assist the existing security architecture in defending the territorial integrity of the nation.
He spoke at the closing ceremony of a two-day post inauguration retreat organised for Members of the House Committee on Defence by the National Defence College, Abuja.
Kalu said, “In making your work easy, we tell you, work within your scope of work. I have seen you also struggle to meet the challenges and the dynamic demands of security, all of which are issues that have gone around the space.
“In some countries, you have Space Service Chiefs, what are we doing about that? There is a need for one to be created. We are beyond what is obvious.
“Some of the warfare is now taking place in space. And I can assure you, we ignore that, we will not be doing justice to the mandate of protecting the territorial borders of this country.
“So, anytime we start looking beyond what happens here, think about what happens up there, the space”, he said.
He stressed that appointing a Space Service Chief to head a Space Command is important, as most warfares now are done in space and cyber operations.
He said Nigeria must be prepared to structure “our preventive operations before we are hit. It calls for deeper conversations as the Parliament will be willing to support this initiative”.
Kalu, however, submitted that internal security of the country should be for the Nigeria Police and they should be allowed and supported to employ more hands to enable the military operate within their areas of competence and training which is not internal security.
