Defence Minister, Justice Crack Clash Over Soldiers’ Meal Video
A fresh war of words has broken out between the Federal Government and one of Nigeria’s most vocal online campaigners, after activist Mark Chidiebere Justice, widely known as Justice Crack, publicly rejected an allegation by the Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, that he coached soldiers to doctor a viral video about their meals.
The dispute traces back to comments Musa made during an interview on News Central on Wednesday, ahead of the station’s NC Exclusive programme. Dismissing longstanding claims that troops are poorly fed, the minister argued that the widely shared footage had been staged. “The soldiers’ food was okay. There was meat, there was all these things. He told them to put all these things out and make it look as if those things were not there,” Musa said. The former Chief of Defence Staff used the same appearance to disclose that the minimum monthly pay of a Nigerian soldier had been raised from N49,000 to N100,000, even as he conceded the wider defence budget remained, in his words, “not enough.”
Justice Crack pushed back in a written statement on Thursday, describing the accusation as false and defamatory and insisting he had no standing to give orders to serving personnel. “I never told any military officer to remove meat or anything else from their food. What authority do I have to give such an instruction? I am not a General, a Commander, or a Colonel. I have no military background whatsoever,” he said. He maintained that the direction of contact ran the other way. “I never reached out to military officers. Rather, some of them reached out to me to express concerns about their welfare,” he stated, framing his intervention as advocacy for “better working conditions, improved welfare, and better living conditions” for troops.
He went further, arguing that the minister’s remarks carried real reputational cost. “It is deeply painful and, in my view, defamatory to hear the Honourable Minister of Defence make such a statement about me on national television without presenting any evidence,” he said, adding that his campaigning had always centred on “accountability, better welfare for our security personnel, and good governance.”
The exchange revives a case that has drawn considerable public attention since it first broke. Court records show the activist was arrested by the Nigerian Army in late April, on or about 28 April 2026, before being transferred to the State Security Service. He was arraigned on 4 May before the Federal High Court in Abuja on a three-count charge bordering on cybercrime, breach of public peace and felony, and pleaded not guilty. One count, under the matter marked FHC/ABJ/CR/253/2026, accuses him of circulating information he allegedly knew to be false about the feeding of Army personnel, contrary to Section 24(1)(b) of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, 2015, as amended.
The prosecution, initially handled by the DSS before the Attorney-General of the Federation took over, opened its case on 18 May, when Justice Joyce Abdulmalik admitted him to bail of N5 million with one surety. The court attached stringent conditions, requiring a surety who is a federal civil servant of Grade Level 15 or above, resident within the court’s jurisdiction, alongside the deposit of the defendant’s international passport. A first prosecution witness, a DSS operative, testified that materials including videos and chats were recovered from the activist’s phone.
The clash lands against a difficult security backdrop. Nigeria’s armed forces continue to battle insurgency in the North-East, banditry in the North-West, and mass kidnappings across several states, pressures that have kept the welfare and funding of troops firmly in public debate. The Army has previously said its own investigation found that the influencer engaged soldiers in conversations capable of inciting discontent, contrary to the Armed Forces’ social media policy, a characterisation his supporters reject. With the trial still running, the courtroom, rather than the airwaves, is where the competing accounts are likely to be tested.