Army denies molesting Ogoni women

The 6 Division of the Nigerian Army, Port Harcourt, has denied online report that its men on operation in Ogoniland, were molesting women in the area.

The Division’s Deputy Director of Public Relations,Col Aminu Eliyazu, in a press statement issued in Port Harcourt yesterday, said “the purported report is the handwork of unrepentant cultists in the area aimed at discrediting the good work of restoring peace in Ogoniland by troops of the Nigerian Army”.

He said due to the operation in Ogoniland, peace was gradually returning to the area.

“The attention of the Nigerian Army has been drawn to a malicious publication in some online media on the purported molestation of some women in Ogoniland by some recently deployed soldiers. The Division wishes to assure the good and peace loving people of Ogoniland, Rivers indigenes and Nigerians at large that, that publication is totally false, mischievous and is at best a failed and unsubstantiated attempt by some cultists and other criminal elements in Ogoniland at crying wolf where there is actually none.

“Simply put, this baseless story is a calculated but failed attempt by some heartless and violent criminal cult groups in Ogoniland, who are definitely behind it, to distract and possibly cause or ginger a call for the withdrawal of the troops whose deployment and operational duties such as patrols and other activities have served to effectively checkmate and deny such criminals freedom of action”, he said.

Eliyazu said the deployment of troops in the area was prompted by incessant cult killings in Ogoniland, adding that a stakeholders meeting convened on March 6, 2017, agreed that there should be restriction of movement from 6.00pm to 7.00am.

“This decision has definitely not gone down well with enemies of the Ogoni people, hence their resort to blackmailing the troops with a false story line which they shamelessly tried to buttress with old pictures of women with placards not minding the fact that the messages on the placards are not at par with the claim of molestation of the women as portrayed in their false story”, the statement added.

It warned trouble makers in Ogoniland to change their cause or face the wrath of the law.