The Director
of Defence Information, Maj. Gen. John Enenche, was a guest on Channels TV
yesterday where he stated that the military was not planning to arrest
anyone
on social media that makes anti-military or anti-government comments because
they do not have the power to make such arrests.
Recall that
Enenche was a guest on the same channel on August 23rd where he disclosed that
the military is monitoring social media for comments that are anti-military,
anti-government and anti-security. Many Nigerians thought it meant that the
military would soon begin to arrest anyone that makes such comments online.
The anxiety
in Nigerians grew when Vice President Yemi Osinbajo during his time as acting
president, had announced that hate speech would now be treated as an act of
terrorism.
During his interview
yesterday, Enenche said the military was just going to monitor the social media
space but it has no power to arrest anyone that makes hate speech on social
media.
“There was
nothing like that. We do not have power to arrest people for hate speeches. It
is just false assertion, against the military, and against my humble self that
I said that we will be arresting people or checkmating people. The military is
not going to be monitoring hate speeches. Did I tell you hate speech in your
recordings? We have a strategic media centre, our strategic media centre
monitors the media, simple. And it is like that all over the world. And we take
that because it helps us to transform the nature of the intelligence to enable
us to prepare for whatever call up we get to ensure security in this country.
Let me tell you and tell the public without fear of anybody; we are trained to
do threat analysis of anything that would threaten the security of this
country. So, it is part of our threat analysis. Any person can interpret it to
mean that it is a follow up to the speech of the Vice-President (Yemi
Osinbajo), the then Acting President and then the minister of interior; then
that person can be right. Where do we take instruction from, where do we get
information from? But on the whole, it is part of what is called threat
analysis.” he said
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