From Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) has called for the restructuring of the Nigerian Security Forces comprising the Military (Army, Air Force and Navy under the Defense Headquarters); the various crack squads of the Nigeria Police Force and the Spy Police (SSS) in order to nip the security challenges on the bud.
The group alleged that in the past eight years and four months (August 30, 2015-Dec 31, 2023) Nigerian security forces carried out 28 major ‘Conduct-Atrocity Operations’ calamitously leading to direct or indirect death outside the law of over 100,000 unarmed and defenseless citizens of Nigeria during which tens of thousands were deadly tortured and secretly held without fair and evidence-base trial and several thousands of others permanently disappeared during custodial abductions and incarcerations.
The Chairman of Intersociety Mr. Emeka Umeagbalasi in a statement said that it’s findings revealed that the direct or indirect death of over 100,000 unarmed and defenseless citizens of Nigeria in 100 months gone-by was found to have represented average yearly deaths outside the law of 12,500, 1,050 per month and 35 unlawful deaths per day.
According to him, “The ‘indirect deaths’ included those that died from torture and gunshot injuries or those abducted and disappeared; and hunger, starvation and deprivations visited upon their dependants occasioned by their absence. Included in this category are victims of the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and Jihadist Fulani Bandits’ massacre or terror.
“Shockingly, about 70% of the direct dead, tortured, abducted and disappeared victims are found to have belonged to members of the South-East, the South-South and the Old Middle-Belt Christians and non Muslim others; out of which roughly 50% represented the sedentary Trado-Judeo-Christian citizens of Igbo extraction openly shot and killed outside the law under false labeling and class criminalization; or abducted from their homes or job places; or on their way to home or work or social outings and tortured or starved to death; or permanently disappeared or secretly held outside the provisions of the written laws without fair and evidence-base trial.
” The remaining 30% represented the unarmed and defenseless Muslim victims killed or maimed during the Nigerian Security Forces’ crude counterinsurgency operations in Muslim parts of the North-East States of Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Adamawa severally captured in the Amnesty International Reports.
“Apart from our findings strongly indicating that the 70% Christian and other non Muslim victims directly or indirectly died in the hands of the Nigerian Security Forces on the grounds of their Faith and Ethnicity, there was also coded security operational policy of “cow humanization” whereby security forces speedily activate rapid responses (including arrests, abductions, disappearances and “neutralization”) against the killers or attackers of Muslim cows than killers or attackers of non Muslim citizens particularly the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and the Jihadist Fulani Bandits.
“Our findings further indicated that the Nigerian Security Forces are neutrality and professionalism challenged; having brutally been radicalized, biased and bastardized particularly since July 2015.
“The Nigerian Security Forces (NSFs) are inches away from being converted to full blown ‘Tribo-Islamic Gendarmes’ and to stop this from being the case, they must be urgently restructured and their personnel and bosses comprehensively retrained and de-radicalized. The “Fulanization” factor in the Security Forces must be frontally addressed including weeding out all the reportedly clandestinely conscripted ethno-religious killer elements in the Security Forces during the disastrous years of the Government of Retired Major Gen Muhammad Buhari (May 29, 2015-May 29, 2023).
” The Nigerian State must also drop and discard the infamous “State Jihadism Project” and take the country back to its supposedly secular status. We are making bold to say that the security forces of Nigeria will never make any meaningful progress in the areas of the country’s territorial and citizens’ security and safety as long as the Nigerian Government continues to beat about the bush and rigmarole in securitization absurdities, frivolities and irrelevancies.
” It is also regrettable that about 85% of the country’s security personnel and bosses are still starkly illiterate in ICT security and intelligence including “Man-Mental-Machine” Policing and Soldiering. Most of the country’s security personnel and their bosses are starkly computer illiterates with gross deficiencies in mental security and intelligence skills. Few of them that are well read have become “professorial or doctoral morons” having been grossly drenched in pandemic corruption and other corrupt practices” Umeagbalasi stated.