Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi on Tuesday said he was not referring to the present-day army when he claimed that troops were deployed along religious lines.
He was quoted as saying that non-Muslim soldiers killed bandits, which in turn led to reprisals.
The Army had said it did not deploy troops along ethnic or religious lines and accused the cleric of wanting to “disparage the Nigerian Army to portray it in a bad light”.
In an interview with BBC News Pidgin, Gumi said: “There is a misunderstanding in the issues. When I speak about the religious issue in the army, I’m not referring to today’s army.
“The issue is from 2010-2015 when some people were in charge of the army and when a lot of bad things happened. It was during that time bombings happened everywhere.
“It happened in Jaji and we lost a popular Muslim general and it was God that saved me because they planted a bomb on me.”