End of insurgency has started –Army spokesman

The Nigerian Army yesterday vowed to crush insurgents with whatever means available to it.

Director of Army Public Relations, Brigadier General Olajide Laleye, who spoke during a media

workshop for officers of the directorate, commanding officers and defence correspondents, assured that Nigerian Army personnel had begun a push that would ultimately end insurgency.

Laleye said the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Kenneth Minimah, had directed the force to reclaim every territory under Boko Haram fighters’ control in the North-East of the country.

He frowned on soldiers running away from the battlefront, but blamed the situation on relations of troops deployed to the battle field whom, he said often called them up to withdraw from the fight.

General Laleye described the insurgents as cowards, explaining: “When you are overpowering them they are moving to where you are not located. That is why they are in Gombe.”

The spokesman boasted that there was no group that could overcome the Nigerian Army “as we have started pushing and have regained so many territories.”

General Layleye spoke shortly after the Executive Director, Corporate Services of The Sun Publishing Limited, Mr. Steve Nwosu and General Editor, Mrs. Funke Egbemode, delivered papers on “The Dynamics of Media Relations: How the Nigerian Military Fares” and “Improving Media Relations, Through Balanced Reporting” respectively.

Nwosu told the military to always react promptly to issues, adding that failure to comment on occurrences was the reason the image of the force had been on the downward slope.

He urged the military to ensure that its personnel were properly educated on how to react to issues to avoid a situation where its account of issues would not make the desired impact.

Also, Egbemode described the relationship between the military and media as that of a husband and a wife who were just in the marriage because of the children.

She urged the military to cultivate the media and make newsmen their friends.

Earlier, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 81 Division, Lagos, Major General Tamuno Dibi, admonished journalists to stop their criticism of the military in the ongoing fight against insurgents in the northern part of the country.