SPECIAL REPORT: How Army, Police, others rape & rip off South East daily and blame unknown gunmen while governors, leaders look on (Pt. 2)

More scathing revelations by Intersociety on horror, abuses, violations by security operatives in South East

In the part one of this Special Report, Diaspora Digital Media (DDM) reported how Nigeria’s leading human rights group, the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) released the most damning report indicting various security outfits, including officers of the Nigerian Army and the Police.

In this second part, we will take a look into how the Army, Police, other security agencies rape and rip off South East and blame unknown gunmen daily while the five state governors and leaders look on.

“Incorrigible… facilitators, aiders and abettors of… atrocities”

According to Intersociety, authorities of the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Police have become incurably incorrigible and facilitators, aiders and abettors of state atrocities.

“Disinformation, misinformation, twisting of facts or facts concoctions, corrupt intelligence, hearsay conclusions and discriminatory policing and soldiering on the grounds of ethnic and religious biases are further found to have become the stock-in-trade of the Nigerian Security Forces (NSFs) and their management authorities particularly in Eastern Nigeria; leading to indiscriminate resort to false labeling, ethno-religious profiling, class stigmatization, mass criminalization, hearsay conclusions, discriminatory law enforcements, criminalization of civil wrongs/civil conducts, recriminalization and conversion of simple offenses and misdemeanors into violent offenses of “terrorism”, “insurgency”, “insurrection”, “treason” and “treasonable felonies”, etc.; using “IPOB/ESN/Biafra Terrorism” as a pretext,” Intersociety observed.

The group noted that the NSFs are responsible for the killing outside the law of tens of thousands of defenseless citizens in the East particularly in the South-East, torture of hundreds of thousands of others and abduction and permanent disappearance of additional thousands in the past nine years and four months or August 30, 2015, to December 31, 2024.

“Tens of thousands of defenseless citizens and their properties in the East have been killed or wantonly destroyed outside the law since August 2015 and controversially labeled “gunned down IPOB/ESN terrorists/oil thieves”,” the Special International Report, Ocean Of Innocent Blood Flowing In The East, noted.

Nigerian Defense Headquarters shoots itself in the foot

In what may seem like a confirmation of the indicting report, the Nigerian Defense Headquarters, on December 5, 2024, claimed that it “killed 666 IPOB/ESN terrorists from Jan to Dec 2024” alone.

Reacting to the announcement, Intersociety stated: “The Defense Headquarters’ announcement did not include defenseless and unarmed citizens, dominated by male citizens of productive age-brackets, abducted in their thousands from the South-East and some parts of the South-South, face-bagged and secretly bundled in the hours of the blue-law to secret military and other security forces’ locations in the North where this Special International Report found that they have died in their hundreds in secret detention facilities; or those shot and left to die untreated; or those abducted and secretly shot and killed and their lifeless body-persons permanently disappeared without traces till date.

“The statistics given by the Nigerian Defense Headquarters also did not include hundreds of others killed outside the law by the country’s police “crack and tactical squads”, numbering over eight (Police Counter Terrorism, Police Rapid Response Squad, Police SARS, Police SWAT, Police Anti Kidnapping, Police STS, Police Anti Cult, Police Highway Patrols, etc.) central formations and dozens of their subordinate formations cutting across the five South-East States and those of Delta, Rivers, etc., says the Executive Summary Of the Ocean Of Innocent Blood Flowing In The East.

The report provided the following statistics covering the nine years in question:

• Over 300 Igbo communities were raided,
• 6000 civilian houses razed,
• 180,000 displaced,
• 1 million frightened and forced to abandon their homes and flee,
• N450 billion defenseless civilian properties lost to military burnings and destructions,
• N3 trillion, or about $2 billion, corruptly seized and illicitly pocketed at roadblocks and other gun-points,
• estimated 2.7 million illicit small arms and light weapons and their ammunitions proliferated, including estimated 400,000 in the hands of about 20,000 Fulani jihadists and allied others occupying some 1000 secret locations in the east including forests, bushes and farmlands.

The mass killings cum genocide

The report further emphasized that hundreds of “kidnappers-for-ransom” squads, etc., killed over 14,500 defenseless citizens and seized estimated 65,000 at gunpoint and forced 55,000 to pay ransoms estimated at N500 billion and additional N50 billion arising from estimated 10,000 millennium automobiles seized from kidnap-for-ransom victims (totaling N550 billion); during which estimated 6,500 (10%) of the seized 65,000 victims who could not pay the ransoms demanded were killed and 3,500 others pardoned and set free under “ill-health and humanitarian conditions”; during which 55,000 others were tortured and set free after paying the ransoms demanded and agreed at gunpoint.

The special report further catalogued and exposed massive arbitrary arrests, perpetual detentions arising from uninvestigated and un-triable phantom allegations, kangaroo arraignments, late night abduction and face-bagging of unarmed Igbo civilians to secret military detention facilities in northern Nigeria, torture and bodily lacerations, open killings and secret executions, enforced disappearances, dead body persons’ disappearances and criminal interments.

It also lamented perpetual concealment of arrested and abducted citizens’ whereabouts and denial of access to their families, lawyers and physicians, as well as invasion and wanton destruction of civilian dwelling houses, false labeling, mass and class criminalization and stigmatization, ethno-religious profiling, prosecutorial vindictiveness, hearsay conclusions, military and police roadblock and barrack-extortions and selective law enforcement operations, etc.

All of these arose from the ongoing military siege and terror in Eastern Nigeria, using “IPOB/ ESN/ Biafra Terrorism” as a pretext.

The devastation and extortion

The report concludes: “All the above indicated that the deployed Nigerian Security Forces (Army, Air Force, Navy, Police, DSS, sub-State actor Vigilantes and Paramilitaries) in the East atrociously killed members of defenseless civilian population dominated by Igbo citizens more than twice higher than (32,300) those killed by armed criminal entities (14,500) who the security forces are deployed with public arms and funds to fish out, prosecute and stop from harming them.

“The deployed security forces and their officers and personnel and high commands were also found to have violently seized and illicitly pocketed, by way of extortion and looting, criminal monies and other properties (over N3 trillion) belonging to defenseless Easterners almost six times higher than those seized and stolen by criminal entities (N550 billion).

The drafted security forces were further found to have burned down or destroyed civilian houses and other properties (N450 billion) over seven times higher than those burned down or destroyed by criminal entities (about N60 billion).

“The security forces also perpetrated the referenced conduct-atrocities with impunity ten times higher than violent crimes and criminalities perpetrated by armed criminal entities which the security forces are deployed and publicly armed and funded to checkmate, track down; and apprehend and prosecute their offenders.

“It is very important to clarify that the above enumerated “outside the law” killings and property violence in Eastern Nigeria did not include death of violently and offensively armed members of non-State actor criminal entities or members of the armed opposition groups; and members of the drafted Nigerian security forces (State actor and non-State actor fighting parties) who died in gun duels or in exchange of gunfire; technically and internationally referred as “battlefield casualties”.”

In its “Technical Clarifications”, meanwhile, the report noted: “Empirically and technically clarified is the fact that the killing outside the law by Nigerian military and others, of 46,800 unarmed and defenseless Eastern citizens in the East in the past nine years and four months did not include estimated 4,500 offensively armed members of non-Government-linked criminal entities and members of the Eastern Security Network (ESN), killed on account of being violently and offensively armed during exchange of gunfire with members of the security forces, during which estimated 2000 or more (armed state actors or members of the security forces), drawn from the military, police and others, were killed or ambushed and killed on duty patrol.

“The estimated 4,500 offensively armed criminal persons/armed agitators’ deaths represented roughly 10% of the 46,800 unlawful killings or deaths: on annual average of about “450 deaths”; technically referred internationally as “legitimate killings or deaths”.

“It is also important to inform that the “4,500 legitimate deaths involving members of the armed criminal entities/armed agitators” and more than 2000 members of the Nigerian security forces are not included in the list of the 46,800 defenseless citizens’ deaths estimated or approximated by this Special International Report.”

The report was backed by 76 recommendations, 15-paragraph affidavit and 282 pages in size

It is also backed by a 17-paragraph Affidavit of Facts, duly deposed before the Enugu State High Court of Justice by the report’s author-in-chief, Emeka Umeagbalasi, a university-trained criminologist and graduate of security studies, with post graduate scholarship in peace studies and conflict resolution.

Read also:

Intersociety releases scathing revelations on horror, abuses, violations by security operatives in South East (Part 1)

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