Ihejirika, who was reacting to claims by an Australia hostage negotiator, Stephen Davies, that the insurgents mentioned him and a former Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sherrif, among the sponsors of Boko Haram.
The former Army Chief made the comment while speaking at a meeting of the Alumini Association of members of Regular Course 18 of the Nigerian Defence Academy, at the National Defence College, Abuja.
Ihejirika said that the insurgents were making moves to exploit the existing diversities in the country to achieve what they have not been able to achieve through violence.
He said, “If this accusation was made in a country like US or UK, it would not be discussed for one hour because they would wave it aside; but they are exploiting our traditional fault lines, a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and young democracy, so what they have tried to do is aimed at achieving what they could not achieve.
“Well, why have I chosen to talk at length; I have chosen to do this because we cannot allow national security to be toyed with; the need for security awareness in spite of the effort I put in at a time and the effort being put by the current leadership of the Armed Forces, the need for security awareness still persist.
I want to further advise that baseless, unfounded and frivolous allegations like this have the capacity of diverting our attention, away from the main problem.”
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