The Nigerian army says it will arrest soldiers who post unauthorised pictures and videos on social media.
Lawrence Fejokwu, 81 division’s general officer commanding (GOC), spoke through Nsikak Edet, his chief of staff, during a workshop organised to educate officers on human rights and humanitarian laws.
Fejokwu said the training would help support the vision of the chief of army staff (COAS), which is to build a Nigerian army repositioned to professionally defeat all adversity in a joint environment.
“For instance, the case of EndSARS which we handled as a division brought about a lot of issues bothering on proper management of social media space,” he said.
“So, this lecture will instill high quality character on how officers should comport themselves when on duties.
“People are watching, taking videos and recording and this can be used against such an officer in a negative form.”
The GOC said the army would be educated on how to ensure that their troops do not take and send unauthorised videos, recordings, or pictures to the wrong set of people.
He added that soldiers who are caught doing so will be arrested and investigated.
“So many photographs that are not supposed to be on the social media space are there and some of them were taken by our own troops,” he said.
“So, it is necessary to ensure that when conducting operations, officers should not be allowed to do the things that can jeopardise the instinct of the strategic directive of the command.
“Such an officer will be arrested, investigated and court-martialed when caught.”
Fejokwu added that the soldiers must learn how to use force and the degree of force to be applied at every point in time.
