A trending video emerged on Sunday in which the President, Muhammadu Buhari, was shown as having expressed his “heartless felt condolences to all” at the burial on Saturday of late Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru.
Buhari was represented at the ceremony at the Military Burial Ground in Abuja by the Minister of Defence, Major General Salihu Magashi (retd).
Attahiru and 10 other military officers had on Friday died in a crash involving one of the planes in the fleet of the Nigerian Air Force.
President Buhari, in a part of the speech extracted from a video by Channels Television and read by Magashi, said: “I wish to express my heartless felt condolences to all….”
He had told those gathered at the ceremony that the officers’ death was a national tragedy.
According to the him, this was a trying period for the country, given that the dead officers were among the nation’s finest.
He said: “It is tragedy to the nation and we must do all we can to honour them.
“They were known for their uncommon loyalty, a virtue that is required of all of us at this trying moment.”
Also interred were Acting Chief of Military Intelligence, Brigadier General Abdulkadir Kuliya; Chief of Staff to the late COAS, Brigadier General Mohammed Idris Abdulkadir; Brigadier General Olatunji Lukman Olayinka; Aide-De-Camp to the COAS, Major Lawal Aliyu Hayat; and Major Nura Hamza.
Others were the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft, Flight Lieutenant Taiwo Olufemi Asaniyi; Flight Lieutenant Alfred Ayodeji Olufade; Sergeant Opeyemi Isaiah Adesina; Sergeant Umar Saidu; and Aircraft-man Olamide Matthew Oyedepo.
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