Nigeria: PH - Troops May Remain Beyond 6 Months

The deployment of troops in Port Harcourt, the troubled capital city of Rivers State, may go beyond the initial six-month projection, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Luka Yusuf, disclosed yesterday.

The Army chief said the decision to withdraw the troops would be taken in conjunction with the governor of the state, Sir Celestine Omehia.

This is coming on the heels of the state government's condemnation of the call by some Ijaw leaders for a state of emergency to be imposed on the state.

Soldiers, who were deployed in the city following weeks of shootings and gun battles between suspected cult groups, are not guaranteed to leave after the initial period of six months, although Omehia said at the weekend that the soldiers would be in the city for that period.

Yusuf made the announcement while briefing the Minister of Defence, Alhaji Ahmed Yayale who was on a working visit of the Army, Navy and Airforce.

He said if the governor, as the chief security officer, "feels that the security situation has improved he will ask for the pulling out of the solders to the barracks".

He said the Army would not flood troops to Port Harcourt so as not to create the impression of a state of emergency there. Yusuf lamented that even though the police were saddled with the responsibility of internal security, "the Army is now taking a very big chunk of it even without being supported with additional logistics".

The army chief informed that the Army was now fully involved in internal security as part of their assistance to civil authority. He disclosed that most of the soldiers in Operation Restore Hope were being moved to support the ongoing operation in Port Harcourt "until peace returns".

Most of the serviceable boats are being moved from Calabar to Port Harcourt to support the operation to block the creeks to prevent the militants from infiltrating the state capital, he disclosed, revealing that more operational vehicles and Armoured Personnel Carrier (APCS) were being moved to Port Harcourt because "it will take time to restore hope and return things to normalcy in the region".Yusuf, however, charged the political class to do their own beat insisting some of the crisis had political undertone.