THE Nigerian military have said they would not hesitate to resist every form of violent agitation against the Nigerian state.
Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Lucky Irabor stated this during a security meeting with retired senior military officers in the South-East zone on Thursday.
He said the meeting was part of the collaborative effort towards addressing security challenges troubling the country.
Irabor, however, stated that while the military were not against anyone seeking to express their constitutional rights, they would not tolerate killing innocent citizens in the name of agitation.
He added that whoever wanted to agitate should take advantage of the provisions of the constitution in doing that and not carrying out violence on people to achieve their aims.
“It is not the job of the military to stop anyone from agitation for whatever he so wishes, it is a political thing,” Irabor said.
“But what we are against is having to use the instrument of violence to bring about the agitation.
“We have a constitution and the constitution enables us to present whatever grievances that we have.
“So anyone going outside the provision of the constitution of course we as military and other security agencies won’t allow that. Why do you have to kill in order to achieve your desires?
“The military will resist any attempt by anybody, group or individual wanting to use the instrument of violence against the state, that we will not allow.
“Again, there are provisions for anyone who believes that he has certain desires within the confines of the arrangement as enshrined in the Constitution to ventilate such views.
“So this is the reason why we think that violence is not the way to go, we are appealing to everyone to seek the course of rule of law to bring about whatever his agitations are.”
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