By Joy Odor
The Director, Defence Media Operations (DDMO), Major General Edward Buba has affirmed that the troops in collaboration wth personnel of DSS in a sting operation arrested the Leader of ISWAP terrorist group in charge of North Central (NC) and North West (NW) Zones of Nigeria and now in custody.
Maj Gen Buba who made the confirmation in a statement on Friday in Abuja while giving update of success stories of the ongoing operations, said the arrest took place on 29 Nov 23, at Tarum Village located outside Bauchi Metropolis in Bauch State.
The DDMO informed that in a similar operation, air interactions were conducted on several enclaves of terrorist leaders in the North West and North Central with huge success.
He regretted that in the fight against economic saboteurs in the South South, Nigerian Air Force, NAF, MI-35P helicopter crashed at 7.45am in Port Harcourt on 1st December 2023 shortly after taking off to embark its operations.
The DMO expressed delight that entire crew of five survived the crash with very minor injuries saying that they are responding to treatment at NAF Medical Centre in Port Harcourt, adding that the operations of the week in focus, resulted in 52 neutralized terrorists, and 204 of them arrested.
He was of the opinion that the ongoing military operations across the country has continued to decimate the fighting force of insurgents, terrorists and violent extremist across the country, hence rendering their fighting capacity low and putting them on the run.
According to him, the troops are targeting the leadership of the groups to ensure they pose no further threat to the safety and security of citizens.
“The troops also arrested 58 perpetrators of oil theft and rescued 234 kidnapped hostages be while troops denied oil theives an estimated sum of six hundred and sixty eight million, seven hundred and thirty one thousand naira only, (N668,731,000.00) in South South zone.
“Troops also recovered 46 assorted weapons and 148 assorted ammunition which the breakdown are: 30 AK47 rifles, 2 josef magnum pump action gun, one double barrel gun, 2 single barrel guns, 12 locally made pistols, 13 dane guns, one hand grenade, 9 locally made rifles, 3 RPG chargers, 2 locally made hand grenades.
“120 rounds of 7.62mm NATO, 364 rounds of 7.62mm special ammo, 54 live cartridges, 11 rounds of empty cases of 7.62mm special ammo, 32 magazines, 34 vehicles, 64 mobile phones, 47 motorcycles and sum of N1,582,690.00 amongst others as some of the items recovered by the troops.
“Troops in the Niger Delta area destroyed 7 dugout pits, 25 boats, 47 storage tanks, 5 vehicles, 141 cooking ovens, one pumping machine, one outboard engine, one tricycle, one speedboat, one tugboat and 51 illegal refining sites and recovered 267,700 litres of stolen crude oil, 567,700 litres of illegally refined AGO and 5,000 litres of DPK” he stressed.
Maj Gen Buba therefore warned that the leadership of the terrorists groups remains the prime targets of the ongoing operations while athe Armed Forces remains determined to destroy the terrorists, insurgents and violent extremist groups in the country and degrading their military capability.
