Army dismisses viral story on Dapchi abduction, says ‘Sergeant Bako’ doesn’t exist

The army has dissociated itself from one David Bako, who claimed to be a deserter in an online report credited to him.

Jude Chukwu, the director of army public relations, in a statement, said after cross-checking its record, the army could not find any “one call Sgt.David Bako, who neither serves in the army, deserted or dismissed”.

The statement read: “The Nigerian army therefore puts the record straight that it has crosscheck it records and cannot find anyone called Sergeant David Bako who neither serves in the army, deserted nor dismissed.”

Bako had claimed in the publication that the Dapchi school girls abduction was planned in the villa and executed with N80 million and he was one of the abductees.

Chukwu, however, disassociate the army from what described as “such fictitious report and request the public to disregard the confession made by the so call Sgt. Bako, who has not been in the army at all.

“It is imperative to know that these baseless and inane allegations are not new in the cyber space, knowing the fact that we are in the age of information warfare.

“Open source intelligence reveals that the website Dailyglobewatch.eu with country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .eu used in publishing stories is obviously fake and therefore not correct.

“Based on our findings the website was registered on the 14 of April 2017 and the last updated was on the same date and will expire on the 14th April 2018.

“We are very familiar with reports of this nature and will advice the general public to disregard such claim and desist from sharing such information on the new media as this is against the Nigerian Cybercrime Act 2015.”

According to him, it is really worrisome to the level at which some people could condescend so low to fabricate facetious allegation against the Nigerian Army and the military at large for cheap political gains or simply an act of pure wickedness.

He urged the public to disregard “such facetious allegation”.

Chukwu reiterated the army’s commitment to remain apolitical and non-partisan in the discharge of its constitutional roles.

“We would also like to reaffirm our unconditional support and obedience to civil authority as well as reassuring Nigerians that these Fifth columnists will not succeed in their mischief as they will be fished out and dealt with accordingly,” he said.