President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday 30th December 2019, met with Nigerian Service Chiefs behind closed doors at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Those at the meeting are Minister of Defence, Bashir Magashi, Chief of Defence Staff, Abayomi Olonisakin, Chief of Air Staff, Sadique Abubakar, Chief of Naval Staff, Ibok Ekwe Ibas and Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu.
Others are the Director-General of the Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha and National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno.
The full details of the meeting are yet to be made public, as it comes just a few days after ISWAP terrorists group slaughtered eleven Christians.
The ISWAP group had a few days ago, released a video claiming to show the execution of 11 Christians in northeast Nigeria, one day after Christmas.
The footage posted in an online Telegram news channel late on Thursday by ISIL-linked propaganda arm Amaq showed 11 blindfolded men being lined up at an unidentified outdoor location.
A masked man in the almost one-minute video claimed the killings were in response to the death of ISIL chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his spokesman. The act has already been condemned by President Muhammadu Buhari, in a statement released a few hours after the video surfaced online.
Although we do not know if on Monday’s meeting was to discuss the recent killings by ISWAP, here was the statement released by President Muhammadu Buhari condemning the devilish act:
“I am profoundly saddened and shocked by the death of innocent hostages in the hands of remorseless, godless, callous gangs of mass murderers that have given Islam a bad name through their atrocities.
We should under no circumstances let the terrorists divide us by turning Christians against Muslims because these barbaric killers do not represent Islam and millions of other law-abiding Muslims around the world.
As a President, the collective security of all Nigerians is my major preoccupation and the death of an innocent Christian or Muslim distresses me.
No true Muslim would be shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ while killing innocent people, an evil frequently condemned by the Holy Qur’an.
These agents of darkness are enemies of our common humanity and they don’t spare any victim, whether they are Muslims or Christians, and therefore, we shouldn’t let them divide us and turn us against one another.
The goal of these psychopaths is to cause confusion and spread distrust between Muslims and Christians, despite the fact that they aren’t representing the interest of Muslims or Islam.
While I condemn this evil, I wish to reassure Nigerians that this administration will not lower its guard in the war against terrorism.
We will continue to intensify our efforts towards strengthening international cooperation and collaboration to break the backbone of these evildoers.
I call on all Nigerians to stand united against terrorism and to avoid unhelpful conspiracy theories that serve the interest of Boko Haram terrorists and ISWAP terrorists group,” the President had said on Friday evening.