The Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, has warned those who are agitating for secession from Nigeria to forget it as such reality will not be possible “in the next three or four millenniums.”

Buratai was speaking after he was conferred an award of the “Millennium Hero” by a coalition of over 80 Civil Society Organisations, CSOs, at the Army Headquarters, Abuja.

The army chief vowed nothing will be able to bring about separation of the country, adding that the Nigerian Army as well as other security agencies were ready to protect the nation from disintegration.

He said: “Those individuals and groups that are bent on distablising our country I think they have to wait till may be the next three or four millennia for them to do that.

“That is if may be the next generation of officers and men will allow them at all.

“Having been given the Millennium Hero award, I want to call on all the agitators for separation and other acts of distabilisation, they better forget it, not in this era, not in this millennium,” Buratai said.

He also assured that insurgency and terrorism will soon be conquered in the country.

“I want to say that we would continue to do our best to maintain security atmosphere that is needed as provided for in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the army chief said.

“We have been tasked to defend our country.

“We have taken a number of measures to ensure that the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists that are on the run are finally cleared, many have surrendered, many of them have been captured.”

Also speaking at the event, the Executive Director of African Media Roundtable Initiative, Olabode Adeyemi, who presented the award on behalf of the CSOs, stressed that Buratai changed the anti-terrorism war against the terrorists.

“The leadership of Buratai has now been generally viewed as one that came with the midas touch and changed the tide of the war,” Adeyemi said.