TheCable

Lucky Irabor, chief of defence staff, says opinions that promote division in Nigeria’s polity won’t be encouraged in the military.

The CDS, who spoke at a meeting with journalists, said troops will be unrelenting in their efforts to ensure that they protect Nigeria’s integrity.

He, however, enjoined the media to be careful about publishing reports and articles that may pass across information liable to cause disunity in the military.

Irabor said going by the administrative procedures in the army, officers will do everything possible not to allow division to affect the fight against insurgency and banditry.

“What we’ll do is that we will ensure that the nation is increasingly undivided, and what we are doing is to ensure that the division we find in the polity does not creep into the military,” he said.

“That is the reason why we must be careful with many of our analyses that we do with respect to the issues that have to do with the administration and discipline of the members of the armed forces.

“I’ll like to encourage the media to insulate the military from comments that do not promote our unity and give impressions as if what you find in the larger polity is what is creeping into the military; that is not correct.

“We will do everything possible in line with the administrative procedures to ensure that we do not allow any form of division to creep into the military.”

Irabor also denied reports that Boko Haram had erected its flag near the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) in Kaduna.

Two officers were killed, while another person was injured when gunmen broke into the NDA on August 24.

Speaking on the incident at the meeting on Wednesday, the defence chief said it wasn’t “strictly” a banditry attack.

“On the attack on NDA, at all times we have given information on this attack, what we find is not something you could say is strictly a banditry attack,” he said.

“Yes, you could say some bad elements that were traced to the bandits organised some house breaking kind of operation that took advantage of the lapses they observed.

“We did not at any point in time indicate that Boko Haram has erected their flags near the NDA. That is not correct.”