The
Chairman, Senate Committee on Army, Ali Ndume, has endorsed the ongoing
onslaught against bandits, including kidnappers, in the northwest
geopolitical zone of the country.
Ndume told newsmen in Abuja
that the resolve by soldiers to take the war to the criminals was in
tandem with the rules of engagement in the military.
The Borno
senator said that media reports on alleged rights abuses in the war
against bandits were misplaced in view of the pain they inflicted on the
citizenry in recent times.
He said: “After hearing this kind
of thing, I beg you, the press, to be objective in your reporting. We
are facing serious problem of banditry and kidnapping, and it affects
all of us. When the army stands up to the occasion and starts taking the
fight against the bandits and achieving results, the next thing you
would start talking about is human rights, mass killings, and all that.
“What of the rights of the people that were killed, the women raped, and the ambush to kill our soldiers?”
Meanwhile,
the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has appealed to
the media to put Nigeria first in their reportage and report accurately
the efforts by the state and federal governments to tackle the
challenges facing the country.
He argued that for any
professional, including a journalist in Nigeria to carry out their
responsibility at all, the nation must first exist in peace, warning
that “if the country goes down, all professionals, including the media
will go down.”
Speaking at the official renaming of the News
Agency of Nigeria (NAN) headquarters after the late Managing Director
and Board Chairman of the organisation, Wada Maida, on Thursday in
Abuja, the minister decried the manner the media report the security
problem in the country.
