By Jibrin Baba Ndache, Abuja,
and Samuel Aruwan, Kaduna
The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) yesterday described the latest allegation of genocide against the Nigerian military by a renown Kaduna-based cleric as “not only diversionary but unfortunate.”
Blueprint had published an exclusive lead story yesterday with the headline, “Killing Field in Borno,” in which Sheikh Ahmed Abubakar Mahmud Gumi alleged that Nigerian soldiers had committed an act of genocide by killing unarmed civilians in the ongoing war against Boko Haram’s insurgency.
The story was accompanied with three photographs purporting to show soldiers lining up a group of civilians many in their teens – and executing them before dumping them into a mass grave.
Gumi, who first uploaded the photographs and a statement on his Facebook page, alleged that the killings took place in Borno state but did not indicate when.
He described the act as genocide that should be investigated by the international community.
“This crime must not go unpunished. The international community should institute an inquiry,” he had said.
The DHQ, in its rejoinder yesterday, said the expose was a “desperate blackmail and propaganda aimed at diverting attention and pitching public opinion against the armed forces.”
It said it unequivocally dissociated the Nigerian military from “any involvement in the alleged genocide as depicted in the graphic pictures which appeared in the front page of Blueprint newspaper of 22 May 2014 edition entitled, ‘Alleged Killing Field in Borno’.”.
In the rejoinder, signed by the Director of Defence Information, Major-General Chris Olukolade, the DHQ said: “While the military will continue to respect freedom of expression of Nigerians, it will not submit to desperate blackmail and propaganda aimed at diverting attention and pitching public opinion against the armed forces.
“Although the real motive of the report and presentation with the apparent intention to impute military complicity in the event depicted in the pictures is yet to unfold, the DHQ sees this allegation as the manifestation of yet another grand design to tarnish and denigrate the image of Nigerian Armed Forces.
“The Nigerian military remains a professional force whose operations is guided by high standard of professional ethics and will not be party to such dastardly act.
“At no time or event in the course of the counter-insurgency operation have the troops embarked on the extra-judicial killing of civilians as exhibited in the gory pictures.
“The location and occasion where the events captured in the pictures were taken is unknown and has no bearing whatsoever as insinuated in the report by the Blueprint newspaper.
“The individual holding stick which the paper mischievously described as ‘a soldier stand(ing) guard…’ is certainly not a Nigerian soldier neither is any of those captured in the pictures.
“The media are once again advised not to make themselves available to those who are desperate to tarnish the good name of the Nigerian Armed Forces.”
Gumi, however, yesterday stood by his claim, insisting that the photographs depicted an actual scene of a “genocide” in Borno state.
In an interview with our correspondent in Kaduna, he said: “This is genocide; there should not be double standard. Everybody is afraid in Nigeria. Even the president is afraid, the military must be overhauled. The whole Nigeria is not safe now.”
Gumi, a retired army officer, said the purpose of his making public the horrific pictures was “to press for an urgent international inquiry into the serial killings of innocent civilians.”
The Islamic scholar also pointed out that the northern part of the country cannot fund or sustain terrorism as it is being alleged in some quarters.
Northern states, he argued, are too poor and “at lowest level of all developmental indices,” and as such cannot in any way finance terrorism that would lead to the region’s extinction.
He argued that there was an external agenda “beneath the ground to perfect the finishing of northern Nigeria to the ground level.
He said: “I researched the northern states; the North is poor and cannot sustain this terrorism.
“Many of our state governments cannot even pay salaries of the little population in their work force.
“Secondly, the North cannot finance terrorism that will affect northerners themselves. Look at Jos, it is North, see Abuja, see Kano, so you mean a Northerner will be fueling what will finish him and the region?
“The source of this insurgency and the funds must be people who want to hurt the North, people who want secession and excess money can be doing this for disintegration purposes. They want to cause destabilisation in Nigeria. International community will then come and say okay, let us divide Nigeria like it was done in South Sudan. This is the only logical explanation of our reality in Nigeria.”
An upbeat Gumi further argued: “Let me tell you, do the peasant boys in the pictures have money, capacity and resources to abduct, keep for instance over 200 girls without being supported? Who are behind them? Do they have money to procure the sophisticated weapons they are seen with? Is it food to eat or gun to kill that is their focus?”
Gumi clarified that he is not opposed to President Goodluck Jonathan simply because of his religious or ethnic background, but his criticism is hinged on the government’s policies and leadership conduct.
“It is not about the president being a Christian; General Yakubu Gowon was a Christian. It is about policies and conduct of a leader.
“He (Jonathan) is taking deliberate policies to undermine a region; how can soldiers be killing people serially and nothing is being done?
“It is not about Christianity, it is about conduct of leadership.
“All we are saying, let there be thorough investigation on the insecurity, nobody should be spared. All those that have a hand (in this) must be punished.”