by Nurudeen M. Abdallah
The Chief of Army Staff General Kenneth Minimah has been urged to explain the rationale behind the deployment of soldiers to protect the former Borno State Governor Ali Modu Sheriff. Despite the fact that the state Governor Kashim Shettima has been stripped of soldiers’ protection.
Former House of Representatives member Dr Haruna Yerima made this assertion in an interview with Daily Trust yesterday, saying the incident is “an insult to the people of Borno and North East states ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. It is very unusual for the Army to deploy elaborate security, headed by a colonel, to protect an individual at the expense of other citizens.”
He said the army needs to provide an explanation as to why it withdrew soldiers giving protection to a constitutionally-elected governor. Yerima, who is a former lecturer at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), said he is “pained on how the military has been reduced to the level of protecting individuals instead of the country’s territorial sovereignty.”
The former lawmaker said “it becomes imperative to ask the Army chief whether the constitutional role of the military has been changed to something else we don’t know.”
See Troops from NewsRescue earlier exposing report