Ahead of the Saturdays off-season gubernatorial elections in Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa States, the Defence Headquarters on Thursday raised the alarm over plots by some unnamed elements to disguise in Military gear to disrupt the exercise in some areas.
Director of Defense, Media Operations, Major General Edward Buba, who disclosed this in Abuja while updating Defence Correspondents on the activities of the Troops of the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN) and other security forces in the various theatres of operations across the six geo-political zones of the country against insurgency activities assured that the Military would deal decisively with some element in the National interest.
According to him, “Our message to such a group is that there will be injurious consequences for such an action. The military will not fold its arms and watch its image dragged to the mud.
“There is no cause for concern, there is adequate security arrangements on ground to guarantee adequate security for the entire law abiding Citizens before, during and after the polls, right now troops, equipment and other logistics are being deployed to the affected states where the elections are taking place on Saturday to complement the security arrangements on ground.”
Speaking on the Operations of the troops, General Buba declared that the armed forces would continue to exert military pressure on groups that seek to derail any progress towards peace and security in the country, saying “there is no doubt that these groups must be defeated and are indeed being defeated.
According to him, “It is for these reasons we are inflicting severe damage on the terrorist, insurgents and violent extremist through our operations across the country. Accordingly, we are targeting their leadership, infrastructure and foot soldiers.
“The coordination between the air and ground forces is like never seen before and yielding amazing results and achievements. We are expecting new platforms that would further enhance our capabilities to further root out the terrorists and destroy their military capabilities.
He explained that the operations of the last one week, resulted in 113 neutralized terrorists with 300 of them arrested.
According to him, “Troops also arrested 25 perpetrators of oil theft and rescued 91 kidnapped hostages. In the SS, troops denied oil theft of the estimated sum of Five Hundred and Seventy One Million Seven Hundred and Ninety Three Thousand Three Hundred and Fifty Naira (N571,793,350.00) only.
“Furthermore, troops recovered 129 assorted weapons and 717 assorted ammunition. The breakdown as follows: one Unserviceable AA gun, one RPG tube, 5 RPG bombs, one GT3 rifle, 54 AK47 rifles, 8 locally fabricated rifles, one locally made rifle, 2 pistols, 2 pump action guns, 2 dane guns, 4 locally fabricated pistol, 3 skeleton of AK47 rifles, 9 hand grenades, one unserviceable AK47 rifle, 14 magazines, 321 rounds of 7.62mm special ammo, 40 live cartridges.
“Others are: 53 rounds of 5.45mm x 39mm ammo, 35 rounds of 7.62mm NATO, 100 rounds of shotgun, 11 rifle body, 7 breech block, 7 rifle butts, 8 rifle muzzles, 9 piston assemblies, 210 springs, one drilling machine, hand filling machines, 10 magazine purges, IED making materials, 4 baofeng radios, 15 motorcycles, 20 mobile phones and the sum of N348,200.00 amongst other items.”
Details later…
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