177 Guards Battalion emerges winner at army competition

Molly Kilete, Abuja

The 2019 Guards Brigade Corporal and Below competition has ended with 177, Guards Battalion emerging the overall winner. They were closely followed by 7, Guards Battalion which took the second position while 176 Battalion came third, Garrison Battalion took the fourth position while 102 was last on the roll.

 The Corporal and Below competition which started on Monday, featured skills at arms, map reading/navigation, cross country and obstacle crossing.

The competition is aimed at enhancing troops’ physical fitness, combat survival as well as confidence and team spirit. It is also aimed at building the combat capacity and readiness of officers and soldiers of the participating units.

In his address on the occasion, the Commander, Guards Brigade, Brigadier-General Umar Musa, while noting that training and re-training of soldiers had become a routine in the Nigerian Army, urged officers and soldiers of the brigade to train harder to curtail the contemporary security challenges in the country which he said were alien to us.

He charged the soldiers to be ahead of the adversaries and deal with the evolving security challenges bedeviling the country.

He said: “Training and re-training of personnel was a routine in the army to prepare troops to develop tactics, techniques and procedures to adequately deal with the evolving security challenges in a highly volatile, unpredictable, chaotic and ambiguous environment like Nigeria.

Gen Musa, while charging the soldiers to be on the alert at all, times said: “You must also not forget the attendant consequences of the asymmetrical dimension of the security challenges bedeviling our dear country which therefore requires constant training at all levels in order to be ahead of the adversary.

“It is on this basis and in line with Chief of Army Staff’s vision of having “a professionally-responsive NA in the discharge of its constitutional roles” that Nigerian Army outlined a series of training activities in 2019 forecast of events.”

He congratulated the winners of the competition and urged the  losers to train and prepare harder for the next competition.