Army faults report of B’Haram distributing goodies in N’East

The army has denied media reports that Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) distributed Ramadan welfare packages to residents of Borno and Yobe states.

The Director, Army Public Relations, Brig-Gen. Mohammed Yerima, stated yesterday that the article did not mention any specific location where the alleged distribution took place.

Yerima said: “The Nigerian Army, being a professional organisation, decided to look at the article with every seriousness to make intelligence out of it.

“However, our analysis established that there was nothing substantial about the claim, except that it was a hurriedly packaged piece of propaganda meant to distract the populace from the recent defeats being suffered by the terrorists.”

According to him, the terrorists, at various times, had attempted to make the lives of the residents of the two states miserable throughout the Ramadan season, which were met with overwhelming response from troops of Operation Hadin Kai.

His words: “The most recent of such being their failure to sneak into Maiduguri on May 11, 2021, same day this ill-conceived article was published. The article went on to give breakdown of the cash and food items distributed, which the publisher alleged was meant to entice the locals to join the terrorists.

The article then switched to speak on the 2019 report of International Crisis Group, which tended to pour encomia on the terrorists’ recruitment system since breaking away from the Abubakar Shekau’s faction.”

The author of the article displayed clear lack of situational awareness by getting designation of the various terrorist groups muddled up, he added.

In the publication, according to him, there is no single mention of any community where the said distribution took place, which is indicative of the fact that there was indeed no community or village where such activity took place.

“The writer omitted such an important part, knowing that once a name is attached to the publication, it would be much easier to unravel the motive behind it, which is simply to mislead the unsuspecting readers.

“Our team of eagle-eyed analysts went further to critically examine the pictures attached to this malicious publication and discovered that they were simply stage-managed in a typical terrorists-styled propaganda. The uncoordinated director of the photo shoot presented the pictures according his intelligence quotient and decided to measure the standard of the Nigerian public from his own personal standing.”