Military personnel and nursing mothers who were grilled at different locations including the famous Giwa Barracks have denied a Reuters investigation that revealed how the Nigerian Army forcefully aborted at least 10,000 pregnancies of women and girls impregnated by the insurgents ravaging the northeast.
An investigative panel set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) went to a military hospital, the state specialist hospital and Giwa Barracks where they grilled characters involved in the allegation.
The panel, according to Daily Trust, began its investigation last Sunday and the hearing would run throughout the week.
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Reuters reported that the military had aborted at least 10,000 pregnancies since 2013. The multi-sourced investigation revealed that the abortion programme took place in the northeastern states of Yobe, Borno and Adamawa, where the Nigerian military has been fighting Islamist insurgents.
According to witnesses, the abortions mostly were conducted without the victim’s consent and often without their prior knowledge. The women and girls ranged from a few weeks to eight months pregnant, and some were as young as 12 years old.
The victims had been kidnapped and raped by the jihadists. However, the military during the course of the mass abortions went wild. Resisters were beaten, held at gunpoint or drugged into compliance, witnesses say.
The report further revealed that the existence of the army-run abortion programme hasn’t been formerly reported. The campaign relied on deception and physical force against women who were kept in military custody for days or weeks.
“Three soldiers and a guard said they commonly assured women, who often were debilitated from captivity in the bush, that the pills and injections given to them were to restore their health and fight diseases such as malaria. In some instances, women who resisted were beaten, caned, held at gunpoint or drugged into compliance. Others were tied or pinned down, as abortion drugs were inserted inside them,” said a guard and a health worker.
THE DENIAL
The panel, acting on a mandate by the federal government to investigate human rights violations in the counter-insurgency operations in the conflict region, northeast, interacted with military officers and some victims kept around them, but they all denied the abortions.
Chairman of the panel, Justice Abdu Aboki, a retired High Court Judge, along with other members, toured the 7 Division military hospital where the head of the facility, Lt Col. Adeniyi Ogunsanya, brazenly refuted the report.
Ogunsanya described the Reuters report as “mere claims that can be made by anybody which has no foundation or proof to back it up.”
“When troops rescue civilian victims from Boko Haram or during a crossfire, they are usually rescued and taken to the rear of the advancing forces where they are given emergency care before they are taken either by road or by air ambulance to the 7 Division Hospital in Maiduguri,” he said.
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According to victims of the insurgency were “medically examined, given needed treatment and then handed back to the Theater Command from where they are taken to the government-owned hospitals for further medical attention.”
Dr Baba Shehu Mohammed, Medical Director (MD) of the State Specialist Hospital said: “No public hospital will do that and if such a thing really happens, it will be easy to get the survivor.”
He said the hospital had received reports of several deaths occasioned by insurgency but none from abortions and massacre of children by the military as alleged.
Daily Trust reported that a nursing mother at Giwa Barack, Fanna, described the report as the “darkest lie she had ever heard.” She said the women that surrendered and were taken to the barrack were not up to 50.
“And, the women’s hostel cannot even accommodate 100 women. Ten thousand is not a small number,” she added.
Hitherto, the army had vehemently denied the claims, saying the report was part of a foreign effort to thwart the country’s battle against the insurgents.
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“Not in Nigeria, not in Nigeria,” said Major General Christopher Musa, who heads the military’s counterinsurgency campaign in the northeast, in a November 24 interview with Reuter. “Everybody respects life. We respect families. We respect women and children. We respect every living soul.”
General Lucky Irabor, Nigeria’s chief of defence staff, did not acknowledge requests for comment from Reuters. On December 2, a week after Reuters sought an interview with Irabor and shared detailed findings and questions with his office, the military’s director of defence information released a five-page statement to reporters and later posted it on Facebook and Twitter.
Major General Jimmy Akpor said Reuters was motivated by “wickedness” and a “bullying” mentality, according to the statement.
“The fictitious series of stories actually constitute a body of insults on the Nigerian peoples and culture,” Akpor said. “Nigerian military personnel have been raised, bred and further trained to protect lives, even at their own risk, especially when it concerns the lives of children, women and the elderly.”
