In news development, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, yesterday, said the military men in the Okuama community were legally deployed with a mandate from the Commander-in-chief of Armed Forces, President Bola Tinubu, to arrest the killers of their colleagues. Musa was reacting to public outcry that the military had invaded the Okuama community in Delta State and had denied them the right to return home, while in search of the killers of the 17 soldiers brutally murdered last month during a peacekeeping mission. But Musa, who spoke on the Morning Show of ARISE NEWS Channel, said, “What we have on the ground in Okuama community is a joint task force, comprising the Army, Navy, Air force, Police, DSS and other security agents. So, it is a joint investigation team, and the army is not doing it alone. We have heard comments from different people saying the army has taken over the community, but what they do not understand is that it is a joint task force carrying out the investigation. Once we have been deployed to operate, we have all the right to effect arrest. So, the task force, which the army is also part of, was deployed legally to effect arrest and not to intimidate innocent people.” He said the military team that went on the tragic peace-keeping were not armed. “That was why they were surrounded, shot and killed and their bodies dismembered,” he said. He identified one Endurance Amagbein as the mastermind of the killing of the officers and soldiers.
He stated, “The killing of the 17 soldiers was premeditated because a group of criminals, cultists, militants, decided to take laws into their hands. He (Endurance) is the mastermind. He is the one who planned and executed this with his boys. And you know they have a lot of issues of cultism within the general area. And again, like I always say, because they were making money illegally, they feel that they are above board, they have so much money that they can do whatever and they buy whoever it is that they can. But that’s one mistake they made. I think they’ve tried the wrong guys. And this time around, the full weight of the law is coming after him and his team.” The CDS described in graphic detail the barbaric killing of the military personnel: “They killed the commanding officer and his team while on a peacekeeping mission, and that is unacceptable. We are happy that the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces has given us his mandate to arrest the killers.”
