 I'm delighted to be in your midst today on this very special occasion of the Nigerian Army Day celebration 2019, an annual event which affords the Nigerian Army an opportunity to showcase its rich history, its values, its achievements, and to demonstrate its commitment to being a professionally responsive force in the discharge of its constitutional role. This year's theme, I'm told, is professionally responsive soldiering, a panacea for the success of military operations. A year ago, I joined you in the town of Mongono in Bono state for the military equipment exhibition event and part of the 2018 celebrations, part of the 2018 Army Day celebrations. There is, I must say, a reassuring feeling that comes from knowing that year in, year out, the Nigerian Army will always be here growing from strength to strength and fulfilling its primary responsibility of securing the territorial integrity of Nigeria. This has been true for the last 156 years and I am confident that by the grace of God, this will continue for yet another 156 years and beyond. I'm told that this year's celebration is taking place here in Lagos and is holding simultaneously with the combat support arms training week which provides the combat support arms of the Nigerian Army with a platform to reappraise their performance. It is gratifying to note that this year's celebration has again provided the Nigerian Army with another opportunity to celebrate and honour deserving personnel who excelled in the fight against insurgencies and other criminal activities across the nation. Let me use this opportunity to reiterate our absolute determination to achieve success in our fight against insurgency and other forms of criminal conduct in the country. You, the members of the Nigerian Armed Forces, have continued to put in your best on behalf of our country. Several of your colleagues have indeed paid the supreme price in order to keep us safe and secure. We acknowledge and appreciate these sacrifices and pray for the repose of the souls of the diseased. Our hearts are with their families and loved ones. It is our responsibility as the government and as political leaders to ensure that they did not and do not die in vain. We have a duty to continue to make available to you our armed forces all the moral, material and financial support that you require. Let me again assure you on behalf of the president commander in chief of the armed forces President Mohammad Ibu Hari, that we will faithfully discharge all our obligations to you. We also must and will continue to demonstrate the political will and determination towards ensuring that our land is reed of insurgency and that criminality is kept at the barest minimum. During the first term of this administration, we worked tirelessly to lay the foundations for Nigeria that works for all of us, regardless of ethnicity, religion or party affiliation. Our priorities were and remain security, the economy and the fight against corruption. The challenges that we faced were grave, but we faced the task resolutely. We rolled back the footprints of Boko Haram where once they controlled 17 local governments in this country, in the northeast of Nigeria, especially as of early 2015, today they control no Nigerian territory. Independent observers have reported also that there has been a drastic decline in the fatalities caused by Boko Haram and the various factions of the group that exist today. They are no more than a shadow of what existed when we came into office. We are surrounded by the evidence of the progress that has been made in the fight against insurgency. As you all know, Mungunu, where you held the military equipment exhibition and the mini trade fair last year, was once a stronghold of Boko Haram. Sambisa Forest, once the spiritual heartland of the insurgents, hosted the 2017 Nigerian Army Small Arms Championship. More than 100 of our Chibok girls abducted in April 2014 have been rescued and reunited with their families in addition to the Daptry Girls and tens of thousands of other Boko Haram hostages and victims freed across the northeast. Let me say that we want to reassure the affected families and friends that this administration will not relent in its efforts to bring back all the remaining girls, including Leah Sharibu, who has become a poster child for the heinous activities of Boko Haram insurgency, but will reunite them with their families and friends by the grace of God. But even as we have seen a curtailing of the threats represented by Boko Haram, we have seen other threats emerging. Islamic State West Africa, Eastwap and others in the Lake Chard Islands and part of Southern Bono. Radical Islamist terrorism is an evil that must be seen as the common enemy of all faiths, including Islam. As the President said and I paraphrase anyone who says Allah Akbar and goes on to kill either is insane or dangerously ignorant of even the tenets of Islam. The likes of Boko Haram, ISIS, Islamic State of West Africa, Eastwap and many Salafist jihadist ideologies are expansionist ideologies that feed purely on hate, hatred of any person or group that does not belong to their particular sect. They have no redressable grievances, so there are no terms of reference for peace. They are fanatics committed to a twisted creed. They exploit the ignorance of the tenets of their faith, poverty and exclusion and the recruitment and women and use children to perpetrate the most heinous atrocities. They are motivated by a satanic desire to control communities by murder and terror whether it is in Iraq, whether it is in Iraq or Bono or Syria. The victims are men and women and children, Muslim or Christians so long as they do not share their Sikh ideology. They target churches, they target mosques, they target markets and motor parks where people gather using children as human bombs to kill randomly regardless of tribe or faith. The challenge for us is to recognize this for what it is, this extremism, this Sikh extremism for what it is and to form alliances across faiths, across ethnicities to destroy an evil that confronts us all. There are also other situations of insecurity in our midst. Fulani herda and farmer conflicts, random killings, banditry and kidnapping, some attributed to Fulani bandits, others of course of people of other persuasions. In different parts of the country there are external challenges that the army has had to intervene in on several occasions. But on behalf of the president I want to reassure all Nigerians that these issues have been seriously tackled by the federal government working with the states through a multi-pronged approach, working with the Nigerian army and all of our security forces and all of our law enforcement agencies. Nobody will be allowed to maim, kill or commit other crimes and escape. It is our duty to apprehend and punish these criminals and we are doing that and will continue to do so. You will hear a lot more about these solutions in the weeks and months ahead. Law enforcement is of course an important element of our response. We've seen an unprecedented ramping up of the deployment of military personnel, multi-agency operations and squads such as the operation World Stroke, the training and deployment of special forces, new forward operating bases and so on to the various flash points in the last 18 months. Several bandits hideouts and camps have been destroyed and hundreds of arrests have been made and it is now up to our judicial system to ensure that justice is mitted out not just comprehensively but also in a timely manner. The Nigerian army through the years has exemplified the ideals of a united country. Regardless of ethnicity or religion, you have fought side by side with your brothers and sisters of different faiths and ethnicities and you have seen many fall by your side as they paid the supreme sacrifice in battle. Enemy fire does not distinguish one from the other nor does it distinguish one faith from another. The blood of so many and the abounding grace of God has kept this nation together. This is why we must never let the self-serving, ethnic and religious jingois and bigots, whoever they may be, create the circumstances for strife and bloodshed again in this nation. This is also an opportunity to remind ourselves and to remind all Nigerians of the need to live in peace with one another, the importance of choosing unity and tolerance over the impulse to be sectional, vengeful or violent in any way. In this second term, the primary focus of the Buhari administration is to build on the foundation that we have laid over the last four years and correct the lapses observed. One of the priorities of the next level is the welfare of serving a retired personnel. You have already seen the demonstration of our commitment in this regard in recent years and we will not relent in this particular efforts. On this unique day of the Nigerian Army Day celebration, let me again join all Nigerians to thank our armed forces, the police and other law enforcement agencies, all working diligently to protect us at great cost to personal comfort and personal survival. We must commend and congratulate the chief of army staff for his dedication and patriotism, his loyalty and doggedness in leading the Nigerian Army in the fight against terrorism and other security challenges. Today's award recipients, let me make it clear that you are, that you are our heroes and that we are extremely proud of you. I congratulate you all on the honor coming your way today in recognition of your selfless and exceptional contributions to the successes recorded by the Nigerian Army, especially in the last 12 months, to the awardees and the ranks of the veterans of the Second World War, the veterans of the Civil War and members of the Nigerian Legion. Our nation remains indebted to you for your service. Congratulations to our gallant serving men and women of the Army. I implore you to continue to discharge your duties according to the rules of engagement and in line with constitutional provisions. But perhaps the most impressive feature of today's celebrations is the demonstration of our local capacity to manufacture armored vehicles. We have seen what Daikon, in collaboration with the command engineering depo of the Nigerian Army, has done with the manufacture of infantry patrol vehicles, tactical patrol vehicles, sophisticated mine clearance systems and other equipments of warfare. ProFORCE, a local vehicle company, has also displayed its mine-resistant anti-ambush protected vehicles that are designed 100 percent here in Nigeria in collaboration with the Nigerian Army. Already some African countries have purchased armored vehicles from this company. Nigeria will, in another decade, manufacture most of its military hardware. Once again, I congratulate you all on witnessing yet another Nigeria Army Day celebration. God bless you all. Long live the Nigerian Army. Long live the armed forces of Nigeria. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.