The Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusufu Buratai has equally been hailed for his leadership and sportsmanship.
This was made known at a peer review gathering of the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations For Transparency and Good Governance [CCSOTGG] which held in Abuja to appraise the administration’s efforts on security.
The group, while commending the Nigerian Army’s decisiveness in dealing with both rising and existing insurgencies, affirmed that Boko Haram is only able to attempt showing its presence in a limited geographical area where it exploits the vulnerability of soft targets, which says a lot about how the Nigerian Army, under the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant General TY Buratai, has been able to degrade the terrorists.
In the statement signed by the convener, Nkechi Odoma, the group condemned all terrorist attacks, describing them as a gross violation of sanctity of human life and an attack on the society and humanity at large.
Attributing the recent wave of peace in the nation to the military’s action, the coalition specifically applauded Buratai’s commitment to the cause, attributing it to the recent Global Terrorism Index which scored Nigeria high.
“The combination of these achievements has revived our hope that Nigeria will step into 2018 as a more secured country with the space available to terrorists continually shrinking until they become a relic of history whose only mention would not be in the daily news bulletins but in the archives, that tell of a gallant era of Nigeria’s Armed Forces.
“We dare say that the Global Terrorism Index 2017, which showed that terrorists are not able to kill as many people as they use to, is a testimony to the victory that Nigeria will ultimately score over the enemies of humanity.
“It is a confirmation that the Nigerian Army under Lieutenant General Buratai has contributed greatly to improvements and the success recorded by the country’s defence architecture in the last two years especially in responding to both internal and external threats.
“This coalition commends President Muhammadu Buhari as the Commander-in-Chief under whom these achievements were recorded”. It read in part.
The coalition further added that aside from degrading Boko Haram as a grievous threat to Nigeria, the Nigerian Army has done even better in preventing the ascendancy of other terrorist and extremists groups like the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Niger Delta Avengers and the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN).
It said these groups have been reported to have foreign backing and that the threats they posed to the country were significant and it is remarkable that the Army has been able to curtail the activities of these groups in the space of time under review.
It said this is in spite of the strident propaganda that the groups and their sponsors mounted against the Army and the COAS while dismantling those that would have metamorphosed into bigger threats who were decisively dealt with and that the inherited terror groups have been served quit notices.
According to the statement, the degradation of terrorism has freed up other facets of national life:
“be it the defeats of Boko Haram and the ability of the people to return to agriculture in the northeast, the containment of IPOB with the resulting confidence in commerce in the southeast or the curtailing of militants with the stability of the oil industry in the south-south” , noting that the removal of these threats have positively impacted on other facets of our national life to an extent that international confidence in the stability of Nigeria is reviving.
The coalition however called on the presidency for more support to the Chief of Army Staff to further contain all acts of aggression in the nation.
“Our commendation is however our own way of playing the Oliver Twist as we task Mr. President to do more. If Boko Haram soft target attack has been confined into just two states in the northeast of the country, we want them to be restricted into just two squared kilometers before their final annihilation.
“This, for us, underscores the need for President Buhari to sustain the tempo of his achievements particularly what the Army has done in turning the gun against Boko Haram and other insurgent groups in the country,” the statement added.
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