The Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant-General Tukur Buratai, said Monday that 99 percent of kidnappers, bandits, terrorists and armed robbers in the country are Nigerians.
Fielding questions from State House correspondents after a close-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, Buratai said since crimes are being perpetrated by Nigerians, there’s need for the citizens to be sharing information with security personnel.
He said all citizens should be part of the solutions to the security challenges facing the country.“As to whether banditry, terrorism and so on will end, I think it all depends. If Nigerians want it to end today, I can assure you it will end if everybody joins hands because these bandits are not outside Nigeria, they are not from foreign land. These terrorists, 99 percent of them are Nigerians. These kidnappers I will say 100 percent of them are Nigerians. So it’s not just a military, security agency task to end the insecurity in this country. It’s only when it goes bad that we are called in, but everybody has the responsibility to handle that.
“Some of the insecurities are as old as history itself and it all depends on what you are doing to contain or defeat it at a particular time. It is the totality of your effort that will determine the escalation or containment of the insecurity in the country” adding that the military has been containing some of these vices for long.
“Armed robbery, Kidnapping and others too are as old as the history of the country but it all depends on the level it’s been perpetuated at a particular time.“Terrorism is relatively new and insurgency, we have had that experience before and we contained it, just like the different crises we have had in different locations. We had the Maitatsine issue, few other uprisings in history we have contained them, the unfortunate civil war has come to an end. So any other crisis will also come to an end. So also is terrorism, insurgency; they will come to an end but the important thing is that it’s been contained. It is not allowed to spread the way it was.
Buratai said “you can only be apprehensive and express discontentment where there is serious insecurity and nothing is being done. But if serious efforts are being done to contain the situation, I believe the right thing for any right thinking individual to do is to be hopeful and support the efforts of all the agencies that are involved in containing the situation.
“There are setbacks that can occur in such military operations or any security operations but that does not mean inability to handle it and incompetence to handle it, as long as the efforts are there and are visible, the support of all and sundry will be required to address it squarely.