39,880 Arms, Ammunition Handed Over To Army

[TGD]

A TASK force set up by the Chief of Defence Staff has handed over a total of 39, 880 assorted arms and ammunition to the 82 Division of the Nigerian Army.

A breakdown of the arms, which were handed over, Saturday, at the 82 Division's parade ground, included: automatic arms - 482; ammunition - 20,132; magazines - 295, and locally made guns - 18, 971. They were recovered from ex-militants.

General Officer Commanding 82 Division, General Adebayor Olaniyi, who spoke shortly after receiving the arms, said it is part of the Federal Government's amnesty programme, which started in 2009.

The GOC said President Jonathan "reasoned that without security there can be no development; he also reasoned that if the arms go out of these areas, they would have done grievous harm to the nation."

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."

Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State praised 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 security agents not to relent in ridding the Niger Delta of illegal arms.

In a speech before handing over the cache, coordinator of the task force, Air Vice Marshal Gbum, said the recovery is in response to new claims and agitations by some groups who felt 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 ammunition 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 is not engaging in a fresh amnesty, as it has no such mandate, stressing, "the mandate is 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."



The Guardian