The Chief of Army Staff, Faruk Yahaya, on Thursday said media reporting of the activities of bandits and Boko Haram terrorists contribute to their victory.

“Insurgents and bandits thrive on the publicity they get from a section of the media,” Mr Yahaya said.

Mr Yahaya disclosed this in a statement by Nigerian Army spokesperson, Onyeama Nwachuku, adding that “if their (insurgents) activities are denied media publicity, fifty percent of the military’s job would have been done.”

Mr Faruk further said that the “expectations of the NA are that the media will continue to support the efforts of the military, as part of their patriotic duty, by giving publicity to troops’ operations, which he said, will undoubtedly shore up troops’ morale and fighting will.”

The COAS will not be the first government official to blame the media for some of the Buhari regime’s notorious and unending failures. 

In October 2021, minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed, also accused the media of bullying the Buhari regime, whereas, it is the regime that has been pushing to gag the media and has sponsored several bills to that effect at the national assembly.

In 2017, former Chief of Army Staff and now Nigeria’s ambassador to the Benin Republic, Tukur Buratai, ordered the clamping down on Premium Times for refusing to pull down a story about the Nigerian army.

For exposing how the son of Chief of Staff Ibrahim Gambari, Bolaji Gambari, runs a cabal within Aso Rock, the Buhari regime ordered telcos to block readers from accessing the Peoples Gazette’s website.

Also, in June 2021, the regime banned Twitter for deleting a tweet in which Mr Buhari threatened a repeat of the civil war genocide against young Igbos in the South-Eastern part of the country, a development that was globally condemned as repressive and anti-democratic.