The Army Headquarters has directed the General Officer Commanding (GOC), 2 Division of the Nigerian Army in Ibadan, to immediately relocate to Kwara State to further coordinate and boost military response to the insecurity in parts of the state.
This was contained in a statement by the Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to the Kwara State Governor, Rafiu Ajakaye, on Sunday.
It was gathered that the directive of the Army Headquarters followed the killing of no fewer than five forest guards and local hunters by suspected bandits early Sunday morning in Oke, Ifelodun Local Government Area.
It was also learnt that members of the local vigilance team neutralised an unspecified number of the bandits in the early morning attack.
Meanwhile, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State, who mourned the deaths of the hunters, “urged our brave residents to remain calm and avoid the temptation to turn on ourselves,” saying, “We will forever be grateful to all of them as our heroes.”
The Governor also called for increased security deployments to the state to rout the criminals involved in attacks in parts of the state.
In a statement following the attack on the positions of the forest guards and the surrounding areas of Oke Ode, the Governor said the state requires more military deployments to roll back the activities of criminals in parts of the Kwara South and Kwara North senatorial districts.
He regretted the loss of innocent civilians and the forest guards who, he said, mounted a spirited resistance to the assailants in the early morning incident out of patriotism and love for their communities.
“My heartfelt condolences go to the families. No word can adequately capture the depth of my sadness and nothing can compensate the bereaved families for these incidents, in spite of our efforts and the investments in enlisting and training the forest guards to bolster the conventional forces.
“Our people are understandably concerned about the situation, and I wholeheartedly share in this grief,” the Governor said in the statement on Sunday.
“While we appreciate the efforts and unquantifiable sacrifices of the security forces as well as the successes so far, we definitely need to do a lot more until we are completely out of the woods.”