Amnesty International has confirmed that the Nigerian Army shot and killed 17 unarmed people and injured at least 50 others ahead of last month’s planned pro-Biafran commemoration in Onitsha, Anambra state. The organisation reported that between the 29th and 30th of May 2016, the Nigerian military fired at members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), supporters and bystanders at three different locations in Onitsha. On its part, the Nigerian Army has condemned the report by stating that army personnel acted in self-defence alone, and only 5 people were actually killed. The police also added that some IPOB supporters killed two policemen in Asaba, Delta state, the day after the incident in Onitsha but, how this tragedy substantiates the army’s argument that they acted in self-defence remains elusive.
M.K. Ibrahim, the Director of Amnesty International Nigeria said:
“Opening fire on peaceful IPOB supporters and bystanders who clearly posed no threat to anyone is an outrageous use of unnecessary and excessive force and resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. In one incident one person was shot dead after the authorities burst in on them while they slept.”
A witness told Amnesty International that on the morning of the 30th of May, he saw soldiers open fire on a group of around 20 men and boys aged between 15 and 45 at the Nkpor Motor Park. He says that five of them were killed. “I stood about two poles away from where the men were being shot and killed. I couldn’t quite hear what they were asking the boys, but I saw one boy trying to answer a question. He immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fire…He lay down, lifeless. I saw this myself.”
Prior to the May 2016 killings
In August 2015, military officers opened fire on peaceful supporters of IPOB calling for an independent Biafran state. The killings and mass arrests of members and supporters of the IPOB by joint military and police operations continued in October, November and December 2015.
For example, in Onitsha on the 17th of December 2015, the military killed five people when they opened fire on members of the IPOB group who were celebrating a court order for the release of their purported leader, Nnamdi Kanu.
Barely two months later, in February 2016, the Nigerian military used excessive force to disperse a peaceful gathering in a school compound in Aba. At least 10 people were killed during this event and many more were injured.
The number of fatalities of pro-Biafra protesters is shocking if you consider the fact that neither the government nor security experts have labelled IPOB members as terrorists. As far as classification goes, they are secessionists which begs the question, why so many deaths?
History argues that the army lacks the temperament to manage protests without employing deadly force, so much so that no one will call you crazy for thinking it is intentional. The Military Aid to Civil Authority (MACA) and Military Aid to Civil Power (MACP) are constitutional mandates that legalise the use of military personnel to manage protests in Nigeria but, at the same time, these military doctrines ought to not be mistaken as a licence to kill. With that said, there must be an end to the pattern of increased militarisation of crowd control operation. Soldiers are frequently deployed to undertake routine policing functions and are more likely to succeed in killing pro-Biafra protesters than in tackling the Niger Delta militants currently blowing up oil and gas installations, costing the nation billions of dollars.
As the nation’s hopes of boosting power supply and increasing oil export leak from broken pipes in the Niger-Delta, citizens must begin to question the basis for which lethal force is used in Nigeria, and the government’s reluctance to deploy the army against armed Fulani herdsmen who go about killing and terrorising citizens in rural communities across the nation.
Security of life and property is every government’s fundamental responsibility to its people. Both the Niger Delta militants and the Fulani herdsmen threaten the current government’s commitment to fulfill that duty in ways the IPOB have not.
It’s unclear whether the National Human Rights Commission expects Nigerians to consider its intolerable silence as a statement of negligence or a lack of concern for these huge accusations of human rights violations levelled against the army and the police.
The right to peaceful assembly and association, as well as the right of freedom of expression, is protected by the Nigerian constitution. International human rights standards also require that law enforcement officials must, as far as possible, apply non-violent means. Therefore,the intentional use of lethal force by the Nigerian army and police against protesters is permitted when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life. The army claims to always obey these laws when discharging its constitutional duties.
If the constitution intentionally empowers citizens to carry out protests so that the protesters can meet their death at the hands of soldiers who treat them like enemies of the state, then the constitution establishes a unique type of deception that is approaching the realm of perfidy, and perfidy qualifies as a war crime.
