Public Interest Memo On Commission Of Heinous Crimes/ Perpetration Of Gross Rights Abuses In Nigeria And Allied Matters: Names Of Suspected Chief Culprits (3)
It is recalled that the leadership of our Organization (Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety) had on 29th June 2017 written and successfully submitted a 17-page detailed memo to Prof Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, in his official capacity as the Acting President of Nigeria & Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
The memo seeks to draw his Government’s attention formally or officially to raging gross abuses of human rights in Nigeria and associated heinous crimes especially since 29th May 2015 when the sixth central civilian Government which he now heads in acting capacity came on board.
For easy public reading, comprehension and analysis, the memo was segmented with its first and second parts published on 29th June and 1st July 2017 respectively.
The links to the two parts are here:
1. Intersociety Bombards Osinbajo With List Of Gross Human Rights Abuses In Nigeria
2. Public Interest Memo On Commission Of Heinous Crimes
The third part continues today, with the fourth/concluding part expected to be published next tomorrow being 5th July 2017. The hard copy of the memo has also been sent to the Acting President of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
Part three of the detailed memo is published as follows:
Our writing you Sir follows attempts by the strongly suspected masterminds of the above named butcheries to escape local and international justice.
In Kaduna State, for instance, one of those fingered as a co-mastermind of the massacre of Shiite Muslims in December 2015 had gone to the extent of hurriedly setting up a selective and segregated judicial commission of enquiry to facilitate its escape from local and international criminal and civil sanctions. The suspected co-mastermind is the Governor and his Government of Kaduna State.
The integrity challenged National Human Rights Commission was also procured by the Nigerian Army leadership and its COAS to technically issue them “a certificate of exoneration” in a massacre operation where even the integrity challenged Kaduna State Judicial Panel inexcusably admitted that “347 Shiite Muslims were killed by soldiers and buried in mass graves”.
Apart from mass boycott of the Kaduna State Judicial Commission of Enquiry and its proceedings by the IMN on account of lack of fairness, impartiality and independence, the findings of the Commission are also being selectively and vindictively implemented by the Government of Kaduna State.
Whereby, for instance, hundreds of innocent Shiite Muslims are arbitrarily arrested and detained on phantom accusation of killing an army corporal during the December 2015 massacre of over 800 members of the group (Shiites) whereas no single soldier including the COAS (Lt Gen Tukur Yusuf Buratai), who operationally ordered and supervised the massacre using his official convoy, security guards and reinforcements which he ordered; has been arrested and charged for mass murder, genocide and attempted genocide (mass maiming).
The army corporal in question is independently said to have died of wounds sustained in Northeast in counterinsurgency operations against Boko Haram insurgents, yet he is said to have been crookedly linked and disguised as “a fallen victim of Shiite attacks”.
Not minding the partial and selective setting of the Kaduna State Judicial Panel, yet it opened up and admitted, per a top official of the Kaduna State Government that “347 Shiite Muslims were massacred by Nigerian Army on 12th and 14th December 2015 and buried in mass graves”; and till date, no single personnel of the Nigerian Army especially its COAS, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai has been put behind bars.
As you are aware or unaware, Sir, the authorities of the Nigerian Army led by its Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Yusuf Buratai have also reportedly engaged in all kinds of image laundering, panicky and self-exonerative efforts to escape local and international justice over their genocidal roles in the massacre of Shiite Muslims in Zaria and unarmed pro Biafra activists in Southeast and parts of South-south Nigeria.
In order to facilitate their exoneration and escape from local and international justice, Sir, rented crowds have been hired; overnight CSOs and pro human butchers’ activists raised and sponsored. Conformist media activists have also joined.
Cases in point are the recent picketing by recruited pro human butchers’ activists at Amnesty Int’l office in Abuja and protests by allied others at the US Embassy in Lagos against a certain compensatory and declaratory justice suit filed against Tukur Buratai & ors at the US District Court of Columbia by some families of the slain nonviolent pro Biafra activists.
As if these were not enough, Sir, the Nigerian Army also went and set up a questionable Board of Enquiry on 9th March 2017 peopled by its serving and retired personnel to investigate itself over serious and grievous human rights concerns raised by the above named leading local and international human rights groups and as expected the said Army Board of Enquiry issued a kangaroo report on 16th June 2017, exonerating itself and claimed that “nobody was killed in the entire pro Biafra “violent” protests”.
It forces us to awash the public with graphic and gory accounts of the atrocities of the Nigerian Army during pro Biafra civil protests or assemblies in Southeast and parts of South-south Nigeria leading to over 270 deaths and 370 injuries.
Contradictorily, Sir, the same Nigerian Army and its COAS had in December 2016 during the 2016 Chief of Army Staff Conference in Owerri told the media that Nigerian Army “killed IPOB members during their protests because they were armed and we acted in self-defense”.
