Abducted Chibok Girls: Nigeria Military Will Not Use Force For Rescue – CDS

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Monday, June 23rd, 2014

As efforts and various options are presently being considered on safety return of over 200 abducted Chibok secondary school girls, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, said on Monday that the military would not use force in the rescue operations of the girls.

Badeh gave this assurance while speaking to members of the Citizen Initiative for Security Awareness (CISA), an NGO, who were on solidarity campaign to the Defence Headquarters in Abuja.

The defence Chief asked rhetorically: “We want our girls back, I can tell you that our military can and will do it, but where they are held, can we go there with force?

“Nobody should say Nigerian military does not know what it is doing; we can’t kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back.

“So we are working, the President has empowered us to do the work, anybody castigating the military, definitely there is something wrong with him..” Badeh maintained.

He clarified that fight against insurgency was quite different from full scale war, adding “if we are fighting an external war, they would have been begging us to withdraw”.

According to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) the CDS claimed the Nigerian Military has proved its worth in the civil war and returned democracy back to Liberia and Sierra-Leone.