Army chief tells defecting SPLA-IO officer that they don’t condone “criminality’

JUBA – South Sudan army chief General Johnson Juma Akot has said that the country’s army doesn’t condone what he said is criminality and lawlessness after former SPLA-IO officer General Moses Lokujo who defected to the SSPDF last week attacked an SPLA-IO position in Kajo-Keji.

General Lokoju defected on September 21 and immediately gave the SPLA-IO a four-day ultimatum to vacate a training center in Kajo-Keji or risk dislodged by force. Yesterday, the former SPLA-IO officer attacked the main armed opposition group but was repulsed, according to the SPLA-IO spokesman General William Gatjiath Deng.

Speaking following an emergency Joint Defense Board (JDB) meeting this afternoon, General Juma stressed that there was not concrete reasons to continue the fight as the former rival forces are in cantonment areas in line with the security arrangements urging the forces there to cease hostilities against each other.

“We call upon all those forces that are involve in the insecurity in teh area of Kajo-Keji to stop moving more to confront themselves it is an exercise that does not comply with teh spirit of the implementing the peace agreement,” General Juma told reporters following a meeting in Bilpam.

“As of now, there is no any good reason that our forces can get in confronting themselves while some of them are already in the training for unification and those who are still outside will have to go the same process of training,” he added.

The army chief further warned the defecting SPLA-IO officer of working to complicate the peace process saying South Sudan army does not condone criminality and lawlessness adding that those forces need to be discipline.

“We don’t condone criminality, we don’t condone insubordinate behaviors, we don’t condone people that take laws into their own hands, we have a structure, we have laws that govern conducts of our operation and if they are discontented with their former structure, in chapter two [of the] agreement, this exercise in that manner is not acceptable,” he said.