General Christopher Gabwin Musa, Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, has said that the military could have erased Delta State’s Okuama community in retaliation for attacks on its men.

Musa said this in his interview with Arise TV on Wednesday, where he also seemed to contradict his claim that the slain soldiers were unarmed.

“If you notice, our operation was highly regulated. I mean, ideally, before now, it would have been a situation where we would have gone and flattened all the communities in that area. But it was measured because we felt not everybody in the community was involved,” Musa said.

“We know that a lot of people knew what was going on and they kept quiet, and that makes them complicit. Like I said, it was a measured operation and a measured response. We are conducting cordon and search operations to thoroughly search for our weapons and arrest those who carried out this dastardly act.”

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By admitting that one of the objectives of the ongoing military operation was to recover the soldiers’ arms, Musa may have contradicted a statement he made earlier in the same interview.

Musa had claimed that the officer who led the slain soldiers was not armed.

“I have heard comments about what were they (the murdered soldiers) doing? [sic] Once we are deployed on operation, we have the right and mandate to arrest all acts of criminality within that area. So they were there legally and they were doing a legal operation. It was because the commanding officer felt that the threat was not that high, that was why he felt he could discuss with these individuals. He did not go armed,” Musa had said.

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“That gallant officer, if he had gone armed, he would [have] erased everybody in that place. He felt that these were people he knew; these were Nigerians he could talk to. When he went to talk to them with his team, they were rounded up and shot. Their body parts were cut, their hearts were removed, and I think that that is one thing all Nigerians should stand against.

“I have heard what the Urhobo leaders have said, and I respect the elders, but I want them to speak from the position of strength. They cannot say that they do not know what was going on there. Since they decapitated the bodies, there’s a lot of human sacrifices going on in those general areas.

“It was part of them showing that they had strength. That was why they cut the hands, disembowelled them, removed the hearts and all of that. I don’t know what that was for. What was their intent?”

After a protracted conflict among neighbouring communities, unknown persons gruesomely murdered Colonel Abdullahi Hassan Alli and other soldiers in Okuama on March 14. The army subsequently took over Okuama and turned it into a military zone, refusing journalists and police authorities entry.