The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Christopher Musa has called on Nigerians to support the country’s troops, saying they should not be demoralised owing to the accidental military bombing in Kaduna State.
About eighty-five persons died in the air strike in Igabi Local Government Area with many wounded, leading to condemnation from several quarters.
But the defence chief who admitted that the troops can make mistakes, called for more support in the face of the growing criticisms against them over the military accident.
“We should not, by our actions or utterances, demoralise our troops. These guys stay awake so you can sleep,” he said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Tuesday. “It is easier for you to say they made a mistake; they’re not doing well. If they pull out of these locations, what happens? We will not even have a country.”
“We understand that generally everybody feels bad. We actually feel bad also. Anytime we have mistakes, we take ownership and we feel extremely bad about it, especially when we lose our own troops in the war,” he added.
“We just want Nigerians to understand that the incident was never deliberate, we will never deliberately target our citizens. Our mandate is to protect innocent Nigerians, and we’ll continue to do that.
“It is unfortunate that out of the 99% successes that we’ve had, this one that we had has given us a lot of negative responses. But we know Nigerians want success, we are succeeding.”
The Nigerian Army had earlier apologised over the incident and described it as “regrettable”.
Several dignitaries and government officials including Vice President Kashim Shettima have visited the victims of the accident with some of them making donations.
