The Defence Headquarters on Tuesday demanded an unreserved apology from Reuters, an International news agency, over a video in which it alleged that soldiers had killed unarmed civilians in Maiduguri.
Col. Mohammed Yerima, the Director of Defence Information, made the demand at a news conference in Abuja.
Yerima lamented that a section of the media in the country had carried the report on Nov. 19 after Reuters had released the video clip.
“The Defence Headquarters wish to protest in strong terms this pattern of reportage by a section of the Nigerian media in which the practice of getting both sides of the story is jettisoned on the altar of sensationalism.
“This, to a large extent, corroborates our conviction that there is a planned conspiracy to tarnish the image of the Joint Task Force in Borno State.
“We consider this unfortunate action by Reuters International as one of the series of calculated campaign of calumny by some disgruntled local and international interests to discredit the integrity and professionalism of the armed forces,’’ he said.
Yerima said the trend was unacceptable and must stop.
He explained that the report carried by Reuters was not new as it was a repetition of what had been aired by Aljazeera on Feb. 4, 2012, alleging that soldiers killed civilians in Jos.
“Contrary to Reuters’ report and the video clip, the Nigerian Army does not use the type of vehicle shown on Internal Security Operations and especially not in the JTF operations.
“The vegetation in the video clip is not typical vegetation obtainable in Maiduguri or in any arid region in Nigeria,’’ he said.
The defence spokesman said one of the pictures in the report was contained in the report of Amnesty International released on Nov. 8.
That report alleged that security personnel had engaged in human rights abuse while dealing with the menace of the Boko Haram activities.
Reuters has since admitted that the video was fake.
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