Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, has said that the military are aware of the location of the abducted school girls but would not use force in the rescue missing girls.

Air Marshal Badeh spoke on Monday in Abuja during a solidarity visit to the Defence Headquarters by members of the Citizen Initiative for Security Awareness (CISA).

A BBC reports monitored in Abuja quoted Badeh as say: “We want our girls back, I can tell you that our military can and will do it, but where they are held, can we go there with force?

“Nobody should say the Nigerian military does not know what it’s doing; we can’t kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back.

“So we are working, the President has empowered us to do the work, anybody castigating the military, definitely there is something wrong with him.

“The good news for the parents of the girls is that we know where they are, but we cannot tell you.

“We cannot come and tell you the military secret, just leave us alone, we are working to get the girls back.”

“if we are fighting an external war, they would have been begging us to withdraw.”

The CDS said there can be no question about the capability of the  Nigerian military, noting, that military proved its worth during the civil war and had been gallant since the country returned to democracy, citing the efforts to bring back democracy to Liberia and Sierra-Leone.

According to him: “We are not happy at all, because we are killing our own kinsmen and we are killing mostly the youths,” Badeh said, referring to the on-going war on terror in north eastern Nigeria.

“We cannot afford to eliminate our youths, who are we going to hand over Nigeria to, we can’t kill them,“ he said.

According to him, the military in Nigeria is the strong arm of democracy, and holds the constitution very dear.

“So, we are using our lives to defend democracy; democracy must thrive in Nigeria, whether anybody likes it or not.

“People have finally realised that you don’t have another military than this one and it is either you support your military or you’re looking for anarchy.

“This war should not be fought by the military alone, but by all Nigerians, Nigeria is at war and everybody must put their hands on deck.

“So, if you can’t do anything else, but you have mouth to support the military, don’t disparage it because you don’t have another one,” he admonished.

On the recovery of arms and ammunition by the military in various parts of the country, the CDS said the arms are alien to the Armed Forces.

He said that some foreigners were supporting the insurgents, adding that the President had said there were Al-Qaeda in West Africa.

“I know that people from outside Nigeria are in this war, they want to destabilize us.

“This is our country and some people are standing with the forces of darkness; we must salvage our country and bring sanity back into our nation.”

-with agency report.