The Chief of Defence Intelligence, Major Gen Parker Udiandeye has described the employment of psychological operations and strategic communication in warfare and the battle against insecurity, as a veritable and critical tool for winning hearts and minds of the citizenry especially in support of national security and cohesion.
Speaking at the National Security Course on Psychological Operations and Strategic Communication held at the Nigerian Army Resource Centre on Monday in Abuja, the CDI observed that “PSYOPS is an integral element of modern warfare that is widely neglected by communication science, even though it is as important and complex as the kinetic aspect.”
He said, “The course themed ‘Winning Hearts and Minds for National Cohesion and Development’ was carefully chosen to increase the knowledge and skills of high performing professional planners on strategic communication aimed at de-escalating conflicts and promoting national cohesion and development.
“The employment of strategic communication, influence operations and all other non-kinetic tools make it a veritable tool for winning hearts and minds especially in support of national security and cohesion.
“Contemporarily, PSYOPS is no longer used only to explain the intentional efforts to manipulate an enemy’s will to fight, but has been expanded to describe attempts to influence public opinion.
While noting that the importance of PSYOPS as an instrument of statecraft, governance and national security cannot be overemphasized, Gen Udiandeye said, “The Agency is more intentional about the benefits of the application of PSYOPS Instruments which include the use of soft power in attainment of national security objectives“.
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Furthermore the CDI said, “the course is to meant to articulate ways to reconnect with our communities and enlighten them on the importance of lawful conduct as against the criminalities, the insurgencies, and tendencies against societal norms.
“The government itself needs to harmonize better processes and procedures for collaboratively working together to reach the communities who are most impacted by these challenges that we are having across the nation.
“So drawing people from across the strata of the security services, governmental planners and practitioners in the media and the rest of the population helps to not only develop capacities, but to also send messages across to the communities themselves, to know that it is a joint work. It is all of us.
“And the safer we are and the more secure we are, the greater our development and the more governmental reach will be availed to our citizens who are our primary constituents that we report to.
And this is the desire of the President Bola Tinubu that would render service that is sufficient, is direct and impactful to better the Lot of the citizenry.
He urged participants of the course, drawn from the various Federal and State MDAs including the Armed Forces, Police, other sister intelligence and security agencies as well as the media to take ownership expressing the belief that “all will benefit immeasurably from the course and be better equipped with the requisite PSYOPS skills to advance government policies in the interest of national cohesion.
In his remarks, the representative of the Chief of Defence Staff and Director of Training at DHQ, Rear Admiral DF Mathew highlighted some of the success achieved with the use of soft power and non kinetic approach across operations saying, “You know that the main trust of the philosophy of the Chief of Defence Staff is people centric, people centered”.
He said that since Gen CG Musa came on board as the CDS so many of the narratives that have been sent out there, countering the bad narratives of the the insurgents and the terrorists have been achieved.
“It is not something that is really tangible that you can see but we’re recording lots of successes using non kinetic approach which the CDS has always preached that we should combine the kinetic approach so that we can have a safe society to actually satisfy the yearnings of the people.
These non kinetic efforts has led to Boko Haram fighters in the North East dropping their arms and surrendering with their families, over 106,000 of them so far
