Major General Cecil Esekhaigbe (rtd) has given an insight into how and why the soldiers and officers who were murdered in Okuama community of Ughelli South Local Government Area of Delta State, were ambushed, abducted and easily murdered.
The deceased officers and soldiers , who were of 181 Amphibious Batallion in Bomadi Local Government Area of Delta State, include Lieutenant Colonel AH Ali, the Commanding Officer, 181 Amphibious Battalion, Major SD Shafa (N/13976), Major DE Obi (N/14395), Captain U Zakari (N/16348), Staff Sergeant Yahaya Saidu (#3NA/36/2974), Corporal Yahaya Danbaba (1ONA/65/7274), Corporal Kabiru Bashir (11NA/66/9853), Lance Corporals Bulus Haruna (16NA/TS/5844), Sole Opeyemi (17NA/760719), Bello Anas (17NA/76/290), Hamman Peter (NA/T82653) and Ibrahim Abdullahi (18NA/77/1191).
Others include Privates Alhaji Isah (17NA/76/6079), Clement Francis (19NA/78/0911), Abubakar Ali (19NA/78/2162), Ibrahim Adamu (19NA/78/6079) and Adamu Ibrahim (21NA/80/4795).
Major General Cecil Esekhaigbe, a former Principal Staff Officer (PGSO) to Minister of Defence and also Nigeria’s Defence Adviser in London, said during Channels Television on Monday said the soldiers went to the coastal community to find out why their colleagues who were on a peacekeeping mission to the village were held hostage.
According to Esekhaigbe who is also a PhD holder and the Okanlete of Esan Land: “It is unfortunate that we have spent a lot of money on a thing we called Amnesty Programme which was designed for those militia groups to lay down their weapons. If after the amnesty and the purported surrendering of weapons, we still have local communities that have sophisticated weapons like this, it calls for a re-examination of the entire process.
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“Now, don’t forget you called it a peace mission. The mindset of these officers and men was to go and find out what the problems were and to find out why their men were kept behind.
“So, their mind was not to go and fight and that is what we must understand. So, they were not going with the mentality of going for an attack. If they, even as few as they were, they would not have been able to surround and dastardly murder them the way they did.
“So, what played out here is that they fell into an ambush because these militia groups have sophisticated weapons and when you are ambushed, no matter how sophisticated you are, you will definitely have the consequences of an ambush.
“That calls to mind the need for training and retraining because you must know the local environment in which you are operating.”
