Army Denies Tribal War at 82 Div Enugu, Death of Three Soldiers
The Nigerian Army has denied the reported tribal in-fighting at the 82 Division Barracks in Enugu over posting of officers and soldiers to tackle the Niger Delta militants.
The Director of Army Public Relations (DAPR), Col. Sani Usman, in a statement this weekend described the allegation as deliberate and calculated campaign of calumny aimed at misleading the public and cause disaffection among troops, "being circulated in the social media by a faceless and obviously subversive group named 'Eastern Radio”.
The group, Usman said, created and posted a story titled “Tribal War at Army Barracks, 82 Division Enugu Three Soldiers Feared Dead” on various social media platforms, alleging that there was an altercation in an unnamed barracks in 82 Division over nomination for “peacekeeping operations” which led to exchange of gunfire among imaginary troops that resulted in loss of lives.
Apart from obvious flaws and inconsistency in the narration, he noted, the Nigerian Army wishes to emphatically state that no such incident occurred anywhere in the Nigerian Army, let alone 82 Division.
According to him, the alleged reported incident existed only in the obviously negatively skewed minds of the authors of such fabrication.
The Army spokesman said that the intent and goals of those behind the story was to cause distrust amongst own troops and the country’s populace at large, "which unknown to them is an exercise in futility because the Nigerian Army is cohesive".
Usman said that the methodology of the group is to employ such campaign of calumny and distortion of an established reign of peaceful, harmonious and esprit-de-corps culture in 82 Division and the entire Nigerian Army. However, he assured, the campaign is a failed one as the entire Nigerian Army remains indivisible, unprovoked and not gullible to such cheap and heinous insinuations.
Speaking further, the DAPR urged Nigerians to discountenance, what he described as "the false story of EASTERN RADIO and their affiliated secessionist groups as there is no iota of truth in the story".
He said: "We would like to inform the public that the 82 Division Nigerian Army is intact in all its locations and deployments, same goes for all the various formations, units, cantonments and barracks of the Nigerian army."
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