BY now, after many years of depressing interactions with their security agencies, Nigerians are either indifferent to or conversant with the controversies surrounding every Amnesty International (AI) report that questions the rights abuse perpetrated by the military and the police. Last Thursday’s damning report by the global rights watchdog entitled “They Betrayed Us” is no less poignant. While the cases investigated and reported by AI have been quite heartrending and serve as a reminder to just how far the Nigerian security agencies have allegedly strayed from their rules of engagement, the response of the military has been predictable, defiant and perfunctory.
In the report, AI painted gory details of sickening rights abuse committed, apparently without any checks, by the military and their civilian militia counterparts (Civilian JTF) in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in the Northeast. It involved the double victimisation of mostly women displaced by the fighting in the region but subjected to rape and torture by the security forces in exchange for sundry favours, including food and medicine. It painted images of wives and girls separated from their husbands and families, stigmatised, pejoratively labelled as Boko Haram wives because of the circumstances of their rescue, and then coerced into offering sex to avert hunger, disease and, worse, death. It also spoke of the rampant tragedy of avoidable deaths in the camps and the mismanagement or refusal by the authorities to take responsibility for the sufferings of hundreds, if not thousands, of victims.
In the words of Osai Ojigho, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria, here is how AI paints the tragedy in some of the camps: “Scores of women described how soldiers and Civilian JTF members have used force and threats to rape women in satellite camps, including by taking advantage of hunger to coerce women to become their “girlfriends”, which involved being available for sex on an ongoing basis. Five women told Amnesty International that they were raped in late 2015 and early 2016 in Bama Hospital camp as famine-like conditions prevailed. Ama (not her real name), 20, said: ‘They will give you food but in the night they will come back around 5pm or 6pm and they will tell you to come with them… One [Civilian JTF] man came and brought food to me. The next day he said I should take water from his place [and I went]. He then closed the tent door behind me and raped me. He said I gave you these things, if you want them we have to be husband and wife’. Ten others in the same camp said that they were also coerced into becoming ‘girlfriends’ of security officials to save themselves from starvation.”
He continues: “Most of these women had already lost children or other relatives due to lack of food, water and healthcare in the camp. The sexual exploitation continues at an alarming level as women remain desperate to access sufficient food and livelihood opportunities. Women said the sexual exploitation follows an organized system, with soldiers openly coming into the camp for sex and Civilian JTF members choosing the “very beautiful” women and girls to take to the soldiers outside. Women reported they were too afraid to refuse demands for sex. Sex in these highly coercive circumstances is always rape, even when physical force is not used, and Nigerian soldiers and Civilian JTF members have been getting away it. They act like they don’t risk sanction, but the perpetrators and their superiors who have allowed this to go unchallenged have committed crimes under international law and must be held to account…”
But responding to the horrifying expose, the military, through one of their spokesmen, John Agim, a brigadier-general, decried the sinister motive of the rights group and dismissed the report as fictitious and a calculated attempt to smear and discredit the military and its efforts to rein in insurgency in the Northeast. The AI report, he says, is full of falsehood and propaganda, and is designed to demoralise the troops sacrificing their lives to protect the country’s territorial integrity. In the light of past experiences, it is not clear just what weight of credibility should be given to the military’s denials. Indeed, in August last year, following a similar outcry against the military’s reluctance to abide by their rules of engagement, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, a law professor himself, set up a presidential review panel to review the military’s countervailing claim of adherence to human rights obligations in their operations. The report was submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari in February. So far, no action has been taken, nor is it even clear that the military was indicted.
The Nigerian military’s Northeast counterinsurgency operations have been shrouded in controversies, a clear departure from the fairly professional manner they had conducted difficult but probably similar operations in the distant past. Whether this departure is a reflection of the decline in professionalism of the armed services or an indication of the revolution in information technology that makes it more difficult to hide anything, is hard to say. But what is obvious is that right from the beginning of the insurgency, when the leader of Boko Haram himself, Mohammed Yusuf, was extrajudicially murdered, the military has not seemed to be able to put one foot right in terms of sustaining a good image for Nigeria’s fighting force. Whether in Baga, Borno State, where a whole community was reportedly razed to the ground in 2013 during a clash between soldiers and Boko Haram insurgents, or in Maiduguri where the military allegedly supervised extrajudicial executions of captured insurgents in 2014, or Bama where extrajudicial killings took place allegedly orchestrated by some officers in 2013, the military has reeled from one controversy to another, trailed by Amnesty International reports now described as hostile and offensive.
The Nigerian government may find the Donald Trump presidency more amenable to their war efforts, but that does not neutralise the reservations held against them by the Barack Obama presidency which, to protest rampant human rights violations, cancelled the visas of a number of Nigerian officers accused of war crimes and refused the sale of desperately needed weapons. Regardless of the positive and unquestioning attitude of the Trump presidency to Nigeria, it is unhelpful that the Nigerian military either instinctively dismisses allegations of heavy-handedness or even potential war crimes, or stubbornly refuses to order investigations against troops blamed for atrocities. Because impunity has become apparently ingrained in the security forces, and misconduct continues to be entrenched, even transmuting from heavy-handedness against insurgents to alleged rape and torture against displaced persons, there is no telling what depths would be plumbed next.
Impunity among the country’s security and fighting forces will not end until the authorities, both political and military, show zero tolerance against rights abuses. Given the stress of war and the brutality of insurgents, it must be acknowledged that the military may not always be able to prosecute a text-book war. Occasional lapses are bound to occur, whether orchestrated or accidental. For the sake of their image as a disciplined fighting force and the image of the country as a whole, it is critical that the military must be able to draw a line between honest mistakes and friendly fire on the one hand, and deliberate acts of impunity and war crimes on the other hand. The military must not assume that exposing war criminals from among their ranks is tantamount to denigrating the entire military force.
It is also unhelpful when the government takes all of six months to review allegations of rights abuses against the military in their Northeast operations only for the report ordered by the vice president in 2017 to be put in the cooler for more than three months. The government does not seem persuaded to undertake the review in the first instance. And with the United States becoming more amenable to selling weapons to Nigeria without seeking guarantees, the restraint and discomfort hitherto shown by the Nigerian government may no longer be necessary. This, plus the desire to portray a positive, even if contrived, image of the armed forces may explain why the military quickly reviewed the allegations by a former army chief, Gen. T.Y Danjuma, against the army and dismissed as unfounded stories of military collusion with herdsmen. If care is not taken, impunity will continue to breed more impunity.
If the Muhammadu Buhari presidency chooses to believe that the image of the country’s security forces is intact and that there is no urgent need to order a holistic review and purge, the government may inadvertently be fostering upon the country a situation of might is right. The inescapable fact on the ground, it is clear, is that the image of the security agencies in Nigeria is at its lowest ebb. Pretending that everything is alright will not automatically transform the country into a stable and united entity when the country’s leaders have demonstrated that they lack the will and understanding to validate the idiom that a stitch in time saves nine. Everything is not alright with the country, not the least the freedoms and happiness of Nigerians, and they know it.
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Source: The Nation
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