An inter-agency task force set up by the Chief of Defence Staff has handed over a total number of 39, 880 assorted arms and ammunitions to the 82 Division of the Nigerian Army, Enugu.
A breakdown of the arms handed over on Saturday to the Military at the 82 Division’s parade ground included the following: automatic arms- 482, ammunitions- 20,132, magazines- 295 and locally made guns- 18, 971.
They were recovered from ex-militants in Delta, Bayelsa and Lacto Marine men.
The General Officer commanding the 82 Division, General Adebayor. A Olaniyi who spoke shortly after receiving the arms from the task force said it was part of the federal government’s amnesty programme which started in 2009.
The GOC said President Goodluck Jonathan had “reasoned that without security there can be no development; he also reasoned that if the arms had gone out of these areas, it would have done grievous harm to the nation”. While commending the task force, he said “these weapons of mass destruction will be destroyed openly just as they were openly collected from the arms militants”.
Also speaking, Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State lauded the federal government’s initiative in setting up the task force.
Chime, represented by the state’s commissioner for environment, Mr. John Egbo urged the federal government and all security agents not to relent in ridding the Niger Delta of illegal arms.
In a speech before handing over the large cache of arms and ammunitions, the coordinator of the task force, Air Vice Marshal Gbum said the recovery was in response to the new claims and agitations by some groups who felt they were excluded from the amnesty programme.
Recalling that the programme was done in June 2009 and October 2010, he said: “immediately after these two phases, there were serious agitations by some ex-militants, who claimed that they also surrendered arms and ammunitions to JTF and other security agencies, but were excluded from the amnesty programme.
“The task force was mandated to among other things, carry out a proper reconciliation of the disarmament records, and effect a thorough documentation of the persons that truly surrendered arms to military formations”. Gbum noted that the task force was not engaging in fresh amnesty, as it had no such mandate, stressing “the mandate was strictly to verify and reconcile the disarmament records and document qualified ex-militants, who truly submitted weapons to security agencies for inclusion in the Presidential Amnesty Programme”.
He said the above mandate took the task force to the two states as well as the Lacto Marine men where claims of ex-militants were painfully scrutinized to ensure that their records showed, beyond reasonable doubt that they truly disarmed to security agencies.
“Therefore, the task force engaged Lacto Marine and his men in order to bring them ashore for disarmament. This process took several days of discreet planning and confidence building before he and his men finally agreed to be disarmed at Ibenco Beach at Eket in Akwa Ibom State”, he added.
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