CITIZENS COMPASS— Popular social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan, on Friday, retracted his earlier allegation against the Nigeria Police Force and the Nigerian Army.
Ortse apologised to the uniform men over the controversial allegation which described the security operatives as “unknown gunmen”.
When he was invited by the Police to come forward with evidence, he claimed that he would tender this in court.
However, he has retracted the allegation with an unreserved apology.
VeryDarkMan made the controversial allegation at the Nigerian Bar Association’s 66th Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Otse, in a video said he had reflected on his speech and realised that he was unfair to security personnel who were genuinely risking their lives to protect Nigerians.
“I don’t think I was fair to a lot of people, particularly the speech where I said that the military are the unknown gunmen, the police are the unknown gunmen, you know, the immigration, the customs.
“I know exactly what I was trying to say because, I mean, I have evidence to back up my claim, but I wasn’t fair to a lot of people in that speech,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say they are also the unknown gunmen, to be very honest, because these people have laid down their lives,” he said.
“My speech was entirely to talk about the bad eggs in our security operative, our security forces, is to put attention on the bad eggs, so that the leaders in these security settings will look inward and to see that sometimes information are being leaked and their own people are sabotaging them,” he said.
“But by passing that speech, like I said, it seems like I was generalising and it’s not fair to the fallen soldiers,” he said.
“So I will go further to say to the Chief of Defence Staff, Sir, I really want to apologise for that speech, and I don’t want to discourage your boys.
“Please extend my apologies to your boys, to the ones that are in the bush protecting our lands,” he said.
“To the families of these heroes that might have also felt offended by this speech, knowing fully well that their brother, their sister, their son, their husband fought and died for this country, I am really, really sorry,” he said.
“Yes, a lot of bad eggs there, like I said, a lot of bad eggs, a lot of them are there.
A lot of corrupt generals, a lot of high-ranking police officers are corrupt, a lot of junior officers are corrupt, a lot of them are there. But there’s still a lot of more good people, a lot of more good people, and I know a lot of them,” he said.
“Imagine a soldier fighting in the bush and he watches VDM’s video, and he’s like, ‘Ah, VDM is one of us now, an unknown gunman.’ That would discourage him, to be honest,” he said.
