President Muhammadu Buhari has accused the Goodluck Jonathan administration of deliberately provoking Nigerian soldiers into mutiny by its actions and turning round to arrest and prosecute the soldiers.
He said while fighting terrorists, they sent soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition.
Mr President said, “We investigated and discovered how funds that were pencilled down for arms procurement were diverted and shared by government officials who served the last administration.
“The government at that time sent the soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition to prosecute the war. That was what led some of them to mutiny. They were arrested and detained because of this.”
Buhari made the accusation in an interview he granted the BBC Hausa Service.
He said his administration’s investigation into the activities of the immediate past government revealed that instead of procuring arms and ammunition for the soldiers, funds meant for the equipment of the military were shared by government officials as if it was their personal money.
Despite the December deadline he had earlier given the military to end terrorism in the affected part of the country, Buhari admitted that the country might not win the war completely by the end of the month.
He however said a lot of progress had been made by the military as the terrorists are now in disarray.
“If people are going to be fair to us, they themselves know that the Army is winning the war. You can no longer find any huge number of Boko Haram members in Adamawa and Yobe; only may be, in about three local governments of Borno in the area around our borders with Chad Republic. They are no longer in position to threaten the country, so we have won,” he added.
