In his words, General Musa insisted that the incident was not deliberate and was caused due to earlier killings of some troops in the area, a few days before the bombing incident.
The Nigerian military has stated that some of its personnel were killed in Tudun Biri, Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State before the accidental bombing in the area which killed 120 residents.
This was mentioned by General Christopher Musa, the Chief of Defence Staff, while appearing on a live programme on Channel Television monitored by SaharaReporters.
SaharaReporters earlier reported how the Nigerian Army on Sunday, December 3, 2023, accidentally killed scores of worshippers celebrating the birthday of Prophet Muhammad (Maulid Nabiyy) in the community.
In his words, General Musa insisted that the incident was not deliberate and was caused due to earlier killings of some troops in the area, a few days before the bombing incident.
The General added that it was due to the previous attack of the troops that made the security operatives kept monitoring strange activities in the community.
He said, “Generally, everybody feels like we actually feel bad. We feel bad also, anytime we have mistakes; we take ownership and we feel extremely very bad about it, especially even when we lose our own troops in the world, we just want Nigeria to understand that the incident was never deliberate, we will never deliberately target our citizens, our mandate is to protect Nigerians, innocent Nigerians. We will continue to do that. It is unfortunate that out of the 99 successes we had. This one that we had has given us a lot of negative responses. We know Nigerians about success and we are succeeding.
“The Federal government has set up a committee that will look into it. We don’t want to make up what has happened, but we know at the end of it, the truth will come out and then everybody will really understand that it was definitely a mistake.
“On that same incident; there were a lot of activities going on in that area, and we’re on because a few days before then, some troops were killed and so we were actually monitoring the movement around that area and unfortunately this other activity happened 10pm at night, which was very strange but like I said, mistakes were made, we would make amend.
“The Armed Forces of Nigeria are solidly behind the government and Nigeria. Our mandate is to defend democracy and we will continue to do that. So, nobody should have any fear. We would make amends after the committee [to probe the matter] has come up [with its report]. Anybody who is found culpable will face the music,”
“We are sincere, we are fair, we are impartial. We want to know what actually happened so that we can make amends. I can assure you that nothing will be swept under the carpet. We just want Nigerians to understand that the incident was never deliberate. We would never deliberately target our citizens. Our mandate is to protect innocent Nigerians and we will continue to do that.”
“We should not, by our actions or utterances, demoralise our troops. These guys stay awake so you can sleep, 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.”