Revive Civil-Military Relations, Rights Group Urges Army Chief

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – A frontline non-political, non-profit, civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has urged the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Faruk Yahaya to urgently resuscitate the seemingly dysfunctional Department of Civil and Military Relations and the Army’s Human Rights Desks.

The association said it has become increasingly imperative the army chief to take such a decisive step in order to curb the spate of infractions and professional misconducts on the part of the military and atrocious act of the gruesome killings of soldiers by armed attackers.

The group also frowned at the inability of the Chief of Army Staff to boost interactions, interfaces and conversations between credible Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the Department of Civil and Military Relations.

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko lamented that the authority has allowed professional misconduct and indiscipline to overwhelm the Armed forces with many of the soldiers on internal security operations involved in unjust, extrajudicial execution and systematic killings of innocent youths with no strong deterrence imposed by the Service Chiefs.

“We are asking the Chief of Army Staff to revive the dead department of civil and military relations and the Army’s human rights desks and make sure that these many cases of misbehaviour and misconduct of soldiers in terms of gross human rights abuses unleashed on civilians during internal security operations are investigated and perpetrators identified and sanctioned to serve as deterrence.

“To continue to tolerate the use of extrajudicial execution of civilians by soldiers is to encourage the killings of soldiers by those the authority chose to call unknown gunmen. Reorganise the strategies for carrying out internal military operations to incorporate the observations involvement of credible Civil rights bodies to minimise human rights abuses and the extra-legal killings of civilians that have happened in Imo State and the rest of the South East of Nigeria”, the association said.

HURIWA also condemned the gruesome killings of soldiers by armed attackers, adding that the blame rests squarely on the military and police chiefs who have been unable to run proper intelligence-led operations so as to crackdown on the appropriate criminals perpetrating the acts of killings, mutilation and desecration of bodies of soldiers in the most appalling and heart-rending conditions.

“We are hereby tasking the military authorities to do more to improve their intelligence capacities so as to uncover the real perpetrators of these dastardly crimes because it is a sign of spectacular failures of leadership and intelligence that these sorts of unnatural killings can go on for years and even the military and police authority are not ashamed to call the attackers unknown gunmen”, the group added.

They also called on government to eliminate the root cause of the violence by freeing the unjustly incarcerated leader of the now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and hold dialogues with aggrieved groups to lay down their arms and embrace constructive engagement.

The association equally berated the Federal Government for making nonsense of the reports of extrajudicial execution of civilians by soldiers and police in Imo State as compiled by Amnesty International and many other credible organisations operating within the South East of Nigeria.

The group said the impressions created by the rejection of these reports compiled from empirical evidence and eye witness accounts is that the Federal Government does not care about the human rights of the citizens and if that is so, the government has created the very reason why soldiers and police operatives are continuously attacked and killed.

“Government must take steps to punish soldiers who are perpetrators of extra-legal killings of civilians and also build up the intelligence capacities of security agencies in the country and also buy technological equipment to carry out military surveillance to generate actionable intelligence on criminals and perpetrators of attacks on strategic national assets and the citizens”, they further explained.

HURIWA recalled that the so-called unknown gunmen have killed a soldier and five other persons in Anaocha and Nnewi South Local Government Areas of Anambra State.

It was gathered that five of the victims were killed at a restaurant in Obiofia village, Osumenyi, in Nnewi South.

The assailants, armed with automatic rifles, cutlasses, and other dangerous weapons, invaded a military checkpoint in Agulu on Saturday and opened fire on soldiers, killing one in the process.

Similarly, two soldiers were reportedly beheaded by gunmen on their way to their wedding in Imo state. A military source confirmed that the couple were beheaded and their private parts were also mutilated. The gunmen reportedly confessed to killing the couple and two others, claiming that it was a revenge against soldiers who they accused of killing innocent people.

The association described as intolerable and condemnable the killings of even a female unarmed Igbo-born soldier and her would-be soldier husband who is also unarmed, noting that the government doesn’t care about the citizens or even about the soldiers being killed.

“Despite the deliberate failure of commanders and heads of security agencies to detect the exact perpetrators of the killings, the government has failed to even take administrative steps to dismiss these incompetent heads of security agencies showing that the government is part of the killings and therefore does not want to end the scenarios of deaths, bloodshed, pains and pangs of suffering.

“Government and by extension military and police authorities should cover their faces in shame that for two years now, the phenomenon of Unknown gunmen has been allowed to fester and grow into a big profitable franchise. We want government officials investigated for benefitting from the activities of unknown gunmen hence they have grown from strength to strength”, they stressed.