A former Head of State, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has scored the Nigerian Army low in the fight against the violent Islamic sect, Boko Haram, in North-East Nigeria.
Buhari, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, said there had been series of complaints that soldiers collect bribes at check-point and rape women during operations.
He spoke on the Hausa service of the Voice of America, monitored in Kaduna on Wednesday.
He stressed the need for soldiers to return to basic military training by maintaining standards during and after operations.
“Now there are accusations that they collect bribe at checkpoints, that they rape women during operations as was the case in Borno. That was not known before. Now, if you kill one of their own, they round up and wipe out the community like what happened at Baga,” he said.
The former military dictator recalled that in the days of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the late president ensured peace by conveying leaders of the Niger Delta militants to Abuja to talk and ensure peace in the region.
“But everybody knows that the Boko Haram leader was arrested and killed. We all know that in times of crisis, the police should do their work and it is only when such crisis escalates that the military comes in and they don’t round up the crisis community and kill everybody,” he said.
However, the General Officer Commanding, 1 Division of the Nigerian Army, Kaduna, Maj-Gen. Garba Wahab, has said that the military and other security agencies need support and not condemnation in the fight against insurgency in Nigeria.
via nigerianeye
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