Retired Members of the Nigerian Armed Forces (REMENAF), Borno State Chapter, have expressed their readiness to collaborate with the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW), a Federal Government security agency operating under the Office of the National Security Adviser to President Bola Tinubu.
Their goal is to combat insurgency and the proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons across the North-East subregion.
This commitment was made on Thursday during a courtesy visit to the NCCSALW office in Maiduguri, led by Lieutenant Commander Bukar Kyari Aji (Rtd), the Chairman of REMENAF, Borno State Chapter.
He assured that they would act as a valuable source of information for the Centre and would work together to completely eradicate the menace of illicit small arms and light weapons in society.
He also explained that the purpose of the visit was to register and reaffirm their unalloyed loyalty, support and commitments to the Armed Forces and other security agencies in their fight against insurgency in the state.
Bukar Aji added that the aims and objectives of the group were to provide a platform for the veterans to connect, share experiences, support military operations through intelligence gathering and dissemination and provide welfare to the veterans and their families.
In his remarks, Maj-Gen Abubakar Adamu (Rtd), the North-East Zonal Director of NCCSALW, expressed delight and readiness to partner with the members of Retired Nigerian Armed Forces to tackle the menace of insurgency and the proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons.
He said that the collaboration was necessary in mopping up Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) in the Zone.
Abubakar Adamu highlighted the negative impact that the proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons (SALW) has on the country’s peaceful coexistence and socio-economic activities. He pledged the Centre’s ongoing cooperation with the group, emphasising that intelligence sharing is essential for preventing the spread of these illicit weapons in the country.
According to him, “One of our responsibilities is to prevent the proliferation of small Arms and Light Weapons and to also enlighten the people. We are a multi-agency department and we have the police, the DSS, and also retired military officers as well as serving military officers.”
He added that, “We have been empowered to receive all illicit small arms and light weapons that have been retrieved from all the agencies and we are the people responsible for destroying them.”
“We are also the only organisation empowered to prosecute gun runners and all the people that have been arrested in terms of dealing with small arms and light weapons”, he said.