•Security meeting likely
The Presidency is worried about the harvest of weapons from militants in the creeks of Ondo State, it was learnt yesterday.
President Muhammadu Buhari, a source said, has ordered an emergency meeting to review the security situation in Niger Delta.
The meeting is expected to hold at the Presidential Villa on Wednesday.
Governors of the nine oil producing states, security chiefs and other stakeholders are billed to attend.
It was learnt that the meeting was being coordinated by the Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Mallam Lawal Daura.
It is a fallout of the massive arms surrendered by repentant militants through the mandate of Ondo State Amnesty Committee, in conjunction with security agencies.
A top security officer in Ondo State said the proposed meeting became imperative because it was believed that only the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) had the capacity to have such massive arms as seen in Ondo State last week.
The Amnesty Committee, supported by security chiefs in the riverine Ajapa community in Ese-Odo Local Government Area of Ondo State, recovered assorted offensive weapons from the militants.
They include a Browning machine gun, General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), Daewoo K3, Colt Automatic rifles, Breda 30, Fiat Revelli modelling, AK-47 rifles, rocket launcher, CETME Ameli, Heckler & Koch MG4, pump action rifles and automatic cartridges.
Military uniforms, police bulletproof vests, dynamites, grenades, bombs and helmets were also recovered from kidnappers of the six pupils of Igbonla Model College at Epe in Lagos State.
The security source said: “What we saw was like a movie: no one ever envisaged that those boys could amass such heavy weapons and keep them. It is highly embarrassing, to say the least.
“Immediately the photographs were released with the story and it was confirmed that those arms were from that community alone, apart from several others that were recovered from other villages, the President ordered that an appraisal be done immediately.
“That is why the governors of the Niger Delta and security chiefs will meet on Wednesday. It is because no one had any inkling that apart from the NDA, any other such group could muster this massive hold of weapons.”
The source noted that a responsible government must be worried because some of the weapons the militants surrendered were not just arms even a country can easily procure.
He said: “It takes a process. But the question is: How did these boys get arms of this magnitude?”
The source added that the meeting will put the modalities to know whether or not there are still more of such groups to surrender their weapons with a view to replicating same in other coastal states.
Source:The Nation
