Sola Ojo, Kaduna
AS part of the activities lined up for this year’s Nigerian Army day celebration, officers and men of 1 Division, yesterday, joined other units to render community service beginning with environmental sanitation in Kawo, Kaduna North Local Government.
The division is also expected to offer free medical services to a community called Dogon-Dawa in Birni Gwari area of the state before the celebration reaches its climax on Saturday, July 6.
Flagging-off the exercise in Kawo, the immediate host community of the division alongside other sister agencies like police and members of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), the General Officer Commanding (GOC) in charge of the division, Major General Faruq Yahaya said the wisdom behind the action was to tell the civil populace that they were part of the community.
According to the army boss, the exercise, apart from familiarizing with the people of the host community, would also enhance professionalism in military formations especially in the area of local intelligence gathering.
He said: “We are enhancing our professionalism in the sense that people can see us as part of them. And by so doing, they make useful information about criminals available to us since these criminals live within the society and members of the society know them even sometimes, more than we do.”
He said the aim of the year’s theme: “Responsive soldier: Panacea for successful military operations”, was to “encourage people to give us information so that we can be acting more proactively before the armed robbers, kidnappers and bandits who unleash terror on unsuspecting members of the community.”
“We are not here alone. We have the men of the Nigerian Police Force, Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps, FRSC and members of NYSC. This shows the synergy among sister agencies saddled with security of lives and property in this country and are happy that, the collaboration has been working,” he said.