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The Federal Government has berated an international media organisation, Reuters, over a report about the Nigerian Army’s involvement in a mass abortion programme.

According to Reuters, the Nigerian Army operated an unlawful, systematic, and covert abortion operation since at least 2013.

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The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, while speaking at an event in Abuja on Monday intended to present the scorecard of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation under Buhari, claimed that the study lacked sufficient proof to establish its veracity.

A minimum of 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls, many of whom had been abducted and raped by terrorists, had been forcibly terminated, according to the research.

Following the Reuters probe, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the Nigerian government to look into complaints made by the news outlet.

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However, Mohammed accused the media organization of peddling fallacious information.

“A foreign news agency recently released a report on the military. They made these allegations without a piece of singular evidence, citing only anonymous sources and a review of phantom documents.

“The writers deserve an award in fiction writing,” he noted.

“The agency claimed that its investigation was based on interviews with 33 women and girls.

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“How do they use interviews with 33 women and girls to arrive at the bogus claim of 10,000 abortions?

“And in a further indication that the figure of abortions quoted was arbitrary or possibly conjured, the agency first put the figure at 12,000 before settling for 10,000,” he said.

Mohammed also said the federal government had given its military a clean bill of health over the allegations stressing that they had served meritoriously at home, and at regional and global peacekeeping operations from 1960 to date.

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“We know that military operations in the North-East are not arbitrary but based on the military’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and Rules of Engagement (ROE), among others.

“Where any proven infraction or criminal act has been committed by any soldier, the law has always taken its course.

“But it is beyond the pale and downright dangerous to accuse a nation’s military, without any verifiable evidence, of massive illegal abortions and infanticides,” he said.

(Ripples)