The CDS said misleading information from Nigerians contributed negatively to the war. He defended his men reminding Nigerians that men of the Nigerian army were not spirits to be everywhere at the same time or know everything.
While delivering his address, Badeh said, “When nations go to war, all elements of national power is usually channelled to fighting the war, all elements of national power, the press inclusive, will fight the war together, when we finish the war, we can come out and start to rebuild.
“Now if you look at it, what is happening in Nigeria with Boko Haram is not different with IS in Iraq and Syria, in fact our own people are more vicious, but everybody has gone to Syria, to go and bomb! Who has come to your aid? You have just been left alone to do it.
“We in Nigeria too, there were predictions in 2004 that by 2015 Nigeria will not be one country, and all of us are sitting down here trading blames and trying to ensure that what those people said in 2004 come true, I don’t know what you are thinking. I do not know what you are thinking.
“Foreign press! They came here, into Nigeria in May, they said they wanted to go to Chibok, we allowed them unfettered access to Chibok, we know that Aisha Sisse of CNN, interviewed some supposed Chibok girls that escaped, they were speaking Hausa, and these were girls that were going to write SSCE, those ones cannot be those Chibok girls. And they did not show us their faces so that we will know them, certainly those were not the girls that were taken from that school.
“My Director of Defence Information, DDI, Major General Chris Olukolade, I use to tease him and say this is Tarik Azziz because he has a very difficult job, but you see, when even your people are misleading you, so what do you do? There was a report that we have seen some of the girls and that only eight are missing, it was a very senior officer that gave that information from Chibok area, well we are dealing with that situation.
“And I think that is when people started saying watch what Chris Olukolade is saying, but he was misled by one of us. There are too many fifth columnists.
“Even in very high places, people will call the CDS and tell us we have seen Boko Haram go and kill them, look you see two people on motorcycle they stop at the market and start shooting and you are calling the military, where are we going to come from? We are operating in the whole of Yobe the whole of Borno and the whole of northern Adamawa, we are not God so we can’t be omnipresent.
“So in such a situation, how do you dispatch the military, are you taking twenty people, are you taking thirty or you are sending two, are you going to carry an aircraft with a bomb that cost fifteen thousand dollars for one, these are bombs that we have been dropping since I became Chief of Air Staff to go and drop on two people on motorcycle, common! we should start giving accurate information, then it can be worked on, but I want everybody to know that we are not omnipresence and omnipotent only God is that.
“I heard talks about elections that the military is taking sides, we beat people, we do that, when we started, there was elections in Ondo, in Ondo elections, the opposition party took helicopter, flew over government house and was dropping leaflets into Government House, is that how you do democracy? did PDP win that elections? We went to Anambra, did PDP win Anambra? Did PDP win Osun? Did PDP win Edo? Please do not drag the military into politics.
“You will say the police are useless; you do not have another one, so stop condemning them always.
“You must be very careful of what you keep saying because everything you keep condemning, will be condemned in your own eye.
“We do not take sides during politics, but we stop people from doing what they are not supposed to do.
“And you can check, everywhere there is election, we do not go near ballot papers and ballot boxes, we stop people from going up and down.
“I have too many issues, but I think the more we talk, the better we will understand ourselves, and the more you will understand the military. We are working under very difficult situation, people do not like us, if you join the people that don’t like us, we would have too many countries out of Nigeria.
“But I think the more we understand our selves the better for us, let us not give the enemy of Nigeria the chance.
The CDS said between the media and security, “one thing should be paramount, national interest, adding that it is not everything that the military knows that she would tell the public.
CREDIT: National Mirror
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