The Defence Headquarters (DHQ), Abuja, on Saturday accused one of the largest news agencies in the world, Reuters, of attempting to blackmail the Nigerian military through what it described as “mercenary journalism”.
The Director, Defence Information, Major-General Jimmy Akpor, disclosed this in a statement, obtained by Newsbreak.ng.
He said that Reuters had indicated to work on supposed stories that were purported to focus on supposed military-run programme of forced abortions performed on women and girls who were held captive and impregnated by Islamist militants.
The second, according to him, is a supposed killing of children by the military as part of counterinsurgency operations.
The Defence spokesman said that the Reuters report was to also allege that since 2013 Nigeria’s military had run a secret, systematic and illegal abortion programme in the country’s North-East terminating at least 12,000 pregnancies among women and girls.
According to him, Reuters also alleged that many children were shot, poisoned, suffocated or run down by vehicles in army-led actions.
Reacting to these allegations, the two-star general said “wickedness really runs in the veins of some people and it surely runs deep in the veins of the Reuters team that concocted such evil for interrogation”.
“The so-called News Editor for Sub-Saharan Africa, Alexandra Zavis, remains in South Africa and concoct evil lies to insult Nigerian people,” he added.
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