The immediate past Chief of Army Staff,
Lt. Gen General Azubuike Ihejika, on Friday warned that giving undue
attention to frivolous and baseless accusations could divert the
attention of the country and her security agencies from the challenge to
eliminate the scourge of terrorism in the country.
The former Army Chief made the comment
while speaking at a meeting of the Alumini Association of members of
Regular Course 18 of the Nigerian Defence Academy, at the National
Defence College, Abuja.
Ihejirika said that the insurgents were
making moves to exploit the existing diversities in the country to
achieve what they have not been able to achieve through violence.
He said, “If this accusation was made in
a country like US or UK, it would not be discussed for one hour because
they would wave it aside; but they are exploiting our traditional fault
lines, a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and young
democracy, so what they have tried to do is aimed at achieving what they
could not achieve.
“Well, why have I chosen to talk at
length; I have chosen to do this because we cannot allow national
security to be toyed with; the need for security awareness in spite of
the effort I put in at a time and the effort being put by the current
leadership of the Armed Forces, the need for security awareness still
persist. I want to further advise that baseless, unfounded and frivolous
allegations like this have the capacity of diverting our attention,
away from the main problem.”
