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| military check point |
According to a NAN report, the checkpoints had resurfaced in Jos, other towns, as well as major and rural roads in the state.
It was also observed that joint security teams, comprising fierce-looking soldiers and policemen, conducted thorough searches on vehicles, forcing a return of traffic gridlock that eased off last week.
President Muhammadu Buhari only recently directed that military checkpoints and road-blocks be removed from the highways, but a top source from the Special Task Force (STF) told NAN in Jos that they returned to Plateau following an appeal by Governor Simon Lalong.
“The governor, after visiting the scene of last Sunday’s night bomb attacks in some parts of Jos north, had blamed the return of the blasts on the lack of mechanism to check the movements of evil people.
“The absence of the military checkpoints has ensured a free flow of all manners of evil and I call on the President to order that they be restored in Plateau,’’ Lalong had said.
Before the governor’s appeal, Rep. Timothy Golu had also called on the President to restore the checkpoints in Plateau “especially in the rural areas’’.
Contacted, STF spokesman, Capt. Ikedichi Iweha, said that the military checkpoints “never totally disappeared’’ at any time.
“The checkpoints did not disappear; we merely reviewed them and collapsed some of them for effective service delivery.
“But, following what happened, I mean the bomb blasts and their aftermath, we resolved to restore the checkpoints to ease and quicken our response to situations”.
