The Nigerian Army has moved its Special Forces Training School to Buni Yadi, the headquarters of Gujba local government in Yobe state.
The town which was once controlled by Boko Haram before it was recaptured by the Army in March 2015, was the centre of the massacre of 59 schoolboys who slept in their dormitories at Federal Government College in 2014.
The town is also the headquarters of the 27 Task Force Brigade of the Nigeria Army.
Created at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, the Special Forces is considered one of the Army’s most effective fighting unit.
Giving reasons why the training school was moved from Niger State to Buni Yadi, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Tukur Buratai, said it was because of the strategic location of the town in the fight against the Boko Haram insurgents.
“We know the importance of this place – Buni Yadi. This is the route they (insurgents) passed through to other parts of the North East and even Plateau in the North Central,” he said while addressing troops at the training school on Saturday.
“It is better for us to have dominated and taken over the place,” Buratai said while assuring the troops of their welfare and logistics need, including required equipment to prosecute the war.
Buratai charged the troops to sustain the momentum of ongoing counter insurgency operations to flush out the insurgents.
According to him, “Operation Lafia Dole’ has entered a critical stage. You must sustain the momentum; there is no going back “There is no time to waste. We want full restoration of peace in the North East. That is what the president wants,” the chief of army staff said.
Buratai later told journalists that he was in Buni Yadi to see how the troops undergoing the Special Forces training were faring.
He explained that the exercise was to make the personnel resilient and be able to withstand challenges they might face in the course of the ongoing operations
