We’ve No Power To Arrest Those Making Hate Speeches On Social Media – Military

The military has said that it does not possess the power to arrest people making hate speeches on the social media.

In a statement by the Director of Defence Information, Maj. Gen. John Enenche, the military while reacting to claim that it is monitoring hate campaigners with the aim of arresting them, said that “it is just false assertion”.

The statement said that the military would only monitor the social media to sheave out information that could be useful for the planning of its operations.

The statement read, “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.”