The Nigerian Army has again denied the Reuters report of its involvement in the abortion of 10,000 pregnancies, murder of children and other Sexual and Gender Based Violations.
The Chief Of Army Staff, Farouk Yahaya, while testifying before the investigative panel challenged the international news agency to bring up evidence to substantiate its claim.
According to the Commander 29 Task Force Brigade, the Nigerian Army is concerned about fighting the insurgency and restoring peace in the North-East and could not have abandoned the cause to engage in abortion of 10,000 pregnancies.
He said it appeared that Reuters was acting a script to rubbish their success against insurgency in the North-East.
Testifying further before the Seven-Member panel chaired by Justice Abdu Aboki (retd.), the witness said while the military was buying arms to fight the insurgents, one would have expected Reuters to support the efforts instead of adopting this “textbook solution” that does not reflect the reality of the situation in the North-East.
“Some people are gifted in writing just like in novels, describing what they never witnessed forgetting that in the military, if you waste any ammunition, you will be court-martialled. We are not a mercenary Army, we are a professional Army”, he maintained.
He further stated that many who are unhappy with their successes have resorted to tarnishing their image.
“We are succeeding and not many are happy that we are succeeding, they cannot reverse our successes therefore they rubbish it”.
“Sometimes, they are playing other people’s scripts. We are not Boko Haram terrorists, we are trained to be professionals and the training is continuous”, he added.
Speaking further, he said, “Maybe, they don’t know we are operating under the government. The National Human Rights Commission follows what is being done in the military and what we are doing is internal operation; we are operating in our country”.
“In addition, caution is planted in our head that the people you are fighting are Nigerians… the policy we have is respect for human beings, we are not more Nigerian than the people. The allegation is just grammar, our business is to defeat the insurgents”.
Asked by the panel’s secretary, Mr. Hilary Ogbonna, to explain Reuters’ claim that soldiers massacred many children said to have been fathered by Boko Haram, he retorted, “This is laughable because even if there is stigma attached to such children, is it the army that will stop the stigma”?
