The Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) says it has begun the overhaul of its intelligence gathering and other operational mechanisms in order to strengthen security in the country.

The Acting Chief of Defence Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Sardauna Davies disclosed this in Abuja on Monday at the opening of the 2016 training conference for Deputy Defence Advisers/Attaches and Librarians.

“The growing sophistication of our society coupled with increasing violence and attendant losses of lives and property, require a continuous reappraisal of our operational tactics.

“Additionally, our methods of intelligence gathering need to be re-strategised in order to appropriately deal with the emerging security environment.

“We are designing a new template on which intelligence reporting would be based, it is intelligence and not intelligence based on incident report and stale news which is ineffective.

“We are reviewing the type of briefs we give to attaches.”

Davies said the previous mechanism was not only ineffective but could not address the needs of contemporary national security.

The intelligence chief said the challenges posed by the Boko Haram insurgency and terrorism in parts of West Africa could have been averted if sufficient intelligence had been conducted.

He said Nigeria would leverage on the experience of experts in the intelligence sector to strengthen its security both at the borders and in volatile parts of the country.

“We want to ensure maximum information gathering that could be analysed into intelligence.

“The contemporary security challenges of Boko Haram terrorism that we have in our hands today started about 15 years ago in the Middle East.

“It should have been predicted then as an emerging threat by our own intelligence service, however it was not.

“As such we could not take appropriate preventive measures to nip it in the bud.”

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the conference had Deputy Defence Advisers/Attaches and Librarians from Nigerian missions across the world in attendance. (NAN)