President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, has banned National Taskforce on the Prohibition of Illegal Importation/Smuggling of Arms, Ammunition, Light Weapons, Chemical Weapons and Pipeline Vandalism (NATFORCE), accusing it of impersonating security personnel in other similar agencies.
The President handed down the directive during a security meeting with service chiefs held at the presidential villa,
Before the presidential directive, acts of banditry, kidnapping which was rampant in the country was portraying the government in bad light, prompting several stakeholders to pass votes of no confidence in the ability to protect lives and properties
The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, briefed State House Correspondent on what transpired in the meeting which lasted just two hours
“The Council has just concluded today’s meeting. It received briefings from all security chiefs and the Council is very satisfied with the performances of all our security chiefs; the military, the police and other security agencies. We are happy with their performance and the gains recorded so far.
“We are moving to the phase of consolidation of all those gains, such that by December, as ordered by the Chairman of the Council, the President, which he has said to all Nigerians before now, that we’ll put, essentially, most of the challenges of banditry particularly, insurgency, kidnapping for ransom, criminalities of that nature, far behind us.
‘’We are equally pleased with the performance of the Nigeria Police on the elections in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun, which elections have demonstrated our commitment to democracy and expression of the will of the people at the polls. Equally of concern is the presence of some illegal outfits that impersonate the legitimate security agencies. Of particular concern is a body called National Task Force on Illegal Importation of goods, Small Arms and what have you, but the short name for it is NATFORCE.
“The Council declares that body an illegal organization, it should just simply disband itself, because the Council has ordered all security agencies to enforce the disbandment of that body and other such bodies that operate illegally without any force of law”, he said.
He noted that the President was particularly pleased with the Nigeria Police Force for maintaining high professionalism during the conduct of gubernatorial elections in Ekiti, Osun and Anambra states.
He commended them on recent feats achieved in taming issues of banditry, kidnapping in the country,and advised them to consolidate on the gains achieved so far before December this year.