The Military High Command said yesterday that false information may hamper the search for the over 200 abducted students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok.
The Director of Defence Information, Maj.-Gen. Chris Olukolade, said in Abuja that false information was misleading the military in the search for the girls.
He spoke at a briefing organised by the National Orientation Agency (NOA).
Gen. Olukolade however said that such misleading information would not discourage the military in searching for the girls.
Additional surveillance equipment have been deployed in the search, he said.
“Some of the information given to the military has turned out on many occasions to be misleading the search team; the trend of wanting to generate false information and wanting to unsettle the populace,” he said.
He pledged that the search efforts will “pay off very soon”.
“At the moment, we have divisions of the Nigerian Army infantry devoted to looking for these girls. And there are four operating units and it is the most active among the operations. They have been deployed to the borders. We also have troops of other security agencies located at various borders.
“The facilities of the Nigerian Army signals and those of the Nigerian Police and all the security operatives have been devoted to coordinating these search and ensuring that information gets back to the control post where all the operations are being monitored and guided.
“The Nigerian Air Force has undertaken series of studies and as at Monday we know that over 250 airplanes have been flown with a view to ensuring that surveillance of the air patrol is sustained on a 24 hours basis over location that information has indicated as the likely position of the abducted girls.
“The multinational task force which has its headquarters in Nigeria has been activated to devote much attention to rescuing these girls. The multinational joint task force has contingents from Chad, Niger and Nigeria, although Nigeria is the major contributor and here is the headquarters of the force. They are paying attention to the borders in Niger, Chad and the contingents of these countries have been mandated to make contact with their commands with a view to also looking out for possible movement related to rescuing these girls. Only two days ago, additional surveillance equipment were deployed to support the ones on ground for this search.”
The Director General of NOA, Mike Omeri, said the Federal Government, in a bid to curb the recurring incidence of misinformation, approved the establishment of a National Information Centre (NIC) in Abuja.
The centre, Omeri said, will be coordinated by the office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), with the National Orientation Agency (NOA) as the implementation agency.
Source: The Nation
