{"id":73747,"date":"2018-12-28T20:56:30","date_gmt":"2018-12-28T19:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=73747"},"modified":"2018-12-28T22:32:12","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T21:32:12","slug":"2019-army-to-begin-python-dance-nationwide-in-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=73747","title":{"rendered":"2019: Army to begin \u2018Python Dance\u2019 nationwide in January"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The Nigerian Army has said it will conduct exercise \u201cEgwu Eke III\u2019\u2019 \u2013 Python dance nationwide, to tackle already observed upsurge in security challenges as the 2019 general elections draw nearer.<\/p>\n

NAN reports that according to the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, who announced this at a news conference on Friday in Maiduguri, the exercise will be conducted from Jan. 1 to Feb. 28, 2019.
\nRepresented by Maj.-Gen. Lamidi Adeosun, the Chief of Training and Operations, Buratai identified those threats as stockpiling of arms by criminal groups, formation of ethnic militia and violence induced by political activities.<\/p>\n

The army had in 2016 and 2017 conducted exercise Egwu Eke I and II to address peculiar security challenges in the South-East geo-political zone, particularly during Yuletide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese challenges coupled with other security threats across the country such as terrorism, militancy, kidnapping and banditry portend that dissident group and criminal elements could cash in on the situation to perpetrate large scale violence before, during and after the 2019 general elections,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

According to the army chief, the Nigerian army troops need to be prepared and equipped with requisite skills in order to professionally and effectively respond to these challenges and security threats in collaboration with the Nigerian Police and other para-military oganisations.<\/p>\n

Responding to question why Egwu Eke III is being conducted nationwide and not restricted to the South-East in line with its code name, Buratai said there is python everywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in the desert of Borno, don\u2019t forget, the Lake Chad basin is there, python can also dance within the desert.
\n\u201cIn fact, we have desert python, so python will dance all over the country this time around,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

The army chief explained that the success of the exercise Egwu Eke I and II in checkmating security threats in the South- East informed its simultaneous implementation across the country now.
\nBuratai called on Nigerians to provide the army and other security agencies with useful and timely information to enable them to deliver on the mandate of exercise Egwu Eke III.
\nHe reaffirmed the commitment of the army to fight against terrorism and insurgency in the country.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nigerian Army has said it will conduct exercise \u201cEgwu Eke III\u2019\u2019 \u2013 Python dance nationwide, to tackle already observed upsurge in security challenges as the 2019 general elections draw nearer. NAN reports that according to the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, who announced this at a news conference on Friday in Maiduguri, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2658,5115,243,721],"class_list":["post-73747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-a","tag-army","tag-nigeria","tag-operation-python-dance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}