By Olayemi Esan
The Nigerian Army has refuted a report by an online publication dated 9th January, 2022 alleging that two soldiers and seven illegal miners were killed during a gun duel, arising from a disagreement over gold nuggets in Magama village in Jibia LGA of Katsina State.
According to the publication, the incident occurred when the soldiers turned down an initially agreed offer of 500,000 naira per pit from the miners, but afterwards, turned around to demand more money on discovering the large quantum of gold nuggets found by the illegal miners in one of the pits.
Army spokesperson, Brig.-Gen. Onyema Nwachukwu in a statement on Sunday, said the story is baseless, unfounded, untrue and a mere figment of the writer's imagination which was aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the Nigerian Army, as no Nigerian soldier was killed, nor involved in any skirmish with illegal miners in Magama village on 5 January 2022.
Nwachukwu further explained that contrary to the insinuations peddled by the online medium, troops deployed in the Northwest are committed and engrossed in the fight against banditry and other criminalities bedeviling that region.
"They are not permitted to participate in any form of mining, whether legitimate or illegitimate,” he noted.
"Aside orchestrating disrepute, fake news as this, has the potential to dampen the morale of the fighting troops, erode their fighting will and undermine the entire operations. This is certainly not what the troops require at this critical time", he announced.
The Army spokesperson therefore urged the general public to disregard the news as it is concocted to denigrate troops, who are working tirelessly to ensure sanity and peace return to the North West region. "We assure the general public of the unrelenting commitment of our troops to decisively tackle the banditry menace in the North West", he said.