The Nigerian Armed Forces that is battling insurgency for more than a decade said on Thursday that all identified terrorists safe havens across the country would be destroyed.
Its Defence Headquarters said the safe havens are supporting and propelling insurgency confronting the country for more than a decade.
Director of Defence Media Operations Major General Edward Buba disclosed this is in Abuja and added that “these safe havens provide the flow of funding, material, weapons, fighters, command and control that supports terrorism and insurgency confronting us.”
He said the identified “safe havens spread across various theatres ranging from the tumbuns in the NE to other locations such as national parks, game reserves and forests across the country”,
Buba said the military operations are now targeting identified safe havens to ensure that they are completely dismantled.
The Armed Forces is constantly re-strategizing and modifying it’s operations to overcome the changes in tactics of the extremist operating across the country.
“Accordingly, the ongoing counter terrorism and counter insurgency operations are designed to ensure that uncertainty is replaced with certainty,” he added.
According to him,among the central issues on the ground, in terms of setting security conditions and overcoming instability are the safe havens of some of these violent extremist groups that have existed for many years. These safe havens in effect provided a support base for insurgent activities.
“For instance, these safe havens provide the flow of funding, material, weapons, fighters, command and control that supports terrorism and insurgency confronting us. There are safe havens spread across various theatres ranging from the tumbuns in the NE to other locations such as national parks, game reserves and forests across the country.
It is clear that some of the the safe havens from which these insurgents and terrorists operate from often extend across the borders with other countries, thereby making it a regional issue. Nevertheless, the objective of ongoing operations is to ensure these safe havens are completely destroyed within the shores of the country
According to DMO, recently, one of the safe havens in Aku Forest in Okigwe LGA of Imo State in the SE was invaded and “troops found unspeakable and unprintable activities going on in the camp. These extremist are cannibals feasting on fellow humans and slaughtering them for other devilish acts,” he said.
Meanwhile, Military operations in the last one week had led to the death of 50 terrorists while 114 of them were arrested. Troops also arrested 19 perpetrators of oil theft and rescued 49 kidnapped hostages.
In the South South Zone, troops denied oil theft of the estimated sum of Nine Hundred and Sixty Eight Million One Hundred and Sixty Thousand Fifty Naira (N968,160,050.00) only.
Furthermore, troops recovered 65 assorted weapons and 400 assorted ammunition. The breakdown are as follows: 25 AK47 rifles, 4 locally fabricated rifles, 4 pistols, 6 pump action guns, 12 dane guns, 3 AK47 rifles loaded with 50 rounds of 7.62mm special ammo among others.
Troops in the Niger Delta area who are fighting economic sabotage discovered and destroyed 54 dugout pits, 66 boats, 138 storage tanks, 253 cooking ovens, 2 pumping machines, 8 speedboat, 17 hoses, 18 drums, 2 cylinders and 53 illegal refining sites.
The troops also recovered 983,350 litres of stolen crude oil, 144,980 litres of illegally refined AGO and 71,650 litres of DPK
He said that the military will continue to fine tune its operations to ensure maximum protect of citizens and restore security across the country. We are getting it right and continue to encourage citizens that know something to say something, so that we can do something about it. Together we win the fight, he assured.