President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the nation’s service chiefs to recover all areas currently occupied by insurgents, bandits and kidnappers across the country.
National Security Adviser (NSA), Major General Babagana Monguno (rtd) told State House correspondents that the president gave the order during a National Security Council meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Tuesday.
“And with effect from today, the new service chiefs have been given directives by the Minister of Defence, conveyed by the President to the Minister of Defence, to reclaim all areas that have been dominated by bandits, by kidnappers and other scoundrels of scallywags,” Monguno said.
The NSA also warned all individuals or groups who have a hand in fueling or sustaining criminal activities in the country to desist from it or face the full wrath of the law.
“Now, I need to stress also that there are individuals in this country who have assumed a status that is beyond what they should be. The intelligence from our own sources, the intelligence at my disposal and the disposal of the other intelligence hence, reveals that we have certain entities, certain individuals who are making capital out of insecurity, especially kidnapping.
“This is a situation that has to be brought to an end and I’m sending a warning to anybody who is hiding beneath a veneer of some status, whether official, in terms of an official capacity or traditional or religious, to stoke the flames of disorder will have himself to blame,” he said.
Buhari on Tuesday banned mining and imposed a no-flight zone in Zamfara State after the release of 279 schoolgirls from a mass school abduction in the Jangebe area.
