We can’t decide on hiring mercenaries for insurgency fight, says DHQ

• Faults B’haram claim on Borno massacre • Foreign military facilitators shun Nigeria

THE Defence Headquarters, yesterday, said it was not in a position to decide for the Federal Government on recruitment of foreign mercenaries to assist in executing the counter- terrorism war in the North East. Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State had recently appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to engage services of foreigners to rout the Boko Haram sect in Nigeria.

He made the call while receiving a federal delegation that was on a condolence visit over the recent killing of scores of rice farmers in Jere council area of the state.

The former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration hired expatriates, including South Africans, to fight the terrorists in the build- up to the 2015 general elections.

The mercenaries were believed to have contributed to the feats the Nigerian Army recorded in the weeks leading to the polls.

The Buhari’s governorment however jettisoned the idea, promising instead, to equip the military for better result.

But Coordinator, Defence Military Operations ( DMO), Major General John Enenche, who spoke at the weekly press briefing on operations of the armed forces yesterday in Abuja, noted that the military had evolved.

“The armed forces we have 150 years ago are not the same with what we have now.

“I want to say that the kind of armed forces and security agencies we have now is normally determined by the people. It is not in our powers to say yes or no. So, it is what the government wants,” he explained. Enenche faulted the claim by the Boko Haram insurgents that the Borno massacre was in retaliation for the arrest of one of theirs. In a video released on Tuesday, the terrorists had also accused the farmers of revealing their itinerary to soldiers.