The Minister of Defence, Muhammad Badaru, has said that no fewer than seven top terrorists commanders were killed by security forces in the last few months.
The Minister who disclosed this on Tuesday during a tour of the Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Jaji, Kaduna State, said there is improvement in the fight against insurgency and banditry, adding that the nature of banditry in the North West zone now happens occasionally than before.
He also disclosed that the military is deploying technology for surveillance and tracing to find the terrorists and deal with them decisively, noting that bandits take advantage of the absence of more boots in every corner of the country to launch pockets of attacks.
He however said that the military is aggressively following the bandits up to flush them out from their enclaves.
On the issue of a non-kinetic approach to the fight against insurgency, he disclosed that many of the insurgents are surrendering.
He, therefore, said the military is accepting and de-radicalising the insurgents and reintegrating them back to society, while those who don’t want to repent would continue being dealt with till their end.
Speaking further after a tour of some of the military facilities and formations in the cantonment, he said some of the facilities were meant to train special forces to fight insurgency.
The minister said a total of 2,400 of the special forces would be trained, where the first phase would begin with 800 military personnel.
