The military high command has described as unfortunate the killing of innocent civilians in Mangu local government area of Plateau State and called on citizens to cooperate with troops to halt senseless killings.
The director, Defence media operations, major general Musa Danmadami while briefing journalists in Abuja, said lack of cooperation from citizens would make the military react rather than being proactive to avoid such ugly incidents.
Speaking on May 29th handing over, he said “agitation will come , agitation will go . Like I told you there is a transition committee which has been put in place and the members of the transition committee which include members of the armed Forces and other security agencies are working round the clock to make sure everything goes successful”.
He said in Jos, “yes whether we like it or not we are doing our best like I have told you severally ,we are doing our best to make sure that everywhere is peaceful in the country and the incident that happened in Jos is quite unfortunate.
“We are human beings so we cannot be everywhere at the same time, most a times, we only have to respond and if people don’t give us credible information on time for us to be proactive, we can only respond to when the incident happened and that is the issue we are having. It is important for the citizens to know that if you observe any activities that you are not comfortable within your immediate environment, report to the relevant authorities and we will react appropriately but if you wait till when the incident happens before you now report, we are only going to respond to an incident and there is nothing much we can do” .
He attributed the attacks to migrating terrorists following military offensives in the North East who are taking advantage of the vast area which is ungoverned.
He said though the criminal elements may be taking advantage of ungoverned areas to penetrate but “what I can assure you is that as far as the military is concerned, there is no hiding place for these terrorists as long as there is cooperation with the civil populace and they are reporting information to us”.
He said operations are going on across the length and breadth of the country and there is no hiding place for them, “Anywhere they go to, We will smoke them out. These people will always bring themselves out and we’ll go after them,” he said.
