We Do Not Have Power To Arrest People Who Make Hate Speeches – Says Nigeria Army

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 forcomments 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