By Edith Nwapi
The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Lucky Irabor, on Friday, declared that the allegations that the Nigerian military was involved in forced abortion of pregnancies of wives of Boko Haram members in Northeast Nigeria as spurious and ‘a rude shock to him’.
Reuters had in a series of reports backed up with interviews of alleged victims, claimed the Nigerian Army run forced abortion programme in the insurgency ravaged northeast part of the country.
The news organisation indicated that women who have been married to members of insurgent group were made to undergoing abortion without their consent if they were arrested and found to be pregnant in military custody.
Reuters claimed it interviewed more than 30 women and girls who testified they endured forced abortions under the clandestine army scheme.
The National Human Rights Commission had inaugurated a panel on Feb. 8, 2023 to investigate the allegations of gross human rights violations contained in the three-part report published in Dec. 2022 on military operations in the north east by Reuters.
However, “It is a rude shock to me that someone could orchestrate such report,” Irabor said while reacting to the report published by news agency, Reuters, when he appeared before the National Human Rights Commission investigative panel on rights violations in counter-insurgency operations by the military in the Northeast.
“There are strange allusions, if they say we want to stop regeneration of Boko Haram children, on what grounds.
“We are not responsible for the stigmatization of the women bore children for Boko Haram insurgents, we don’t know them” he said.
Answering on Reuters claims that they interviewed some officers who gave them such information of abortions, he said those officers should be brought to the panel.
“Who are the officers, I will give them immunity to come and testify before the panel on what they have alleged.
“Throughout my I stay as a commander, I never heard of those who are referred as wives of Boko Haram insurgents,” he said.
He told the panel that the army worked in hierarchical manner, there is nothing written or verbal of such programmes as claimed by Reuters.
“I never witnessed it, it is a strange allusion the arrangement within the armed forces. We have disciplined procedures, if the officer saddled with a responsibility did not report how do I know?
“The military facility under my control is open. There is nothing secretive going on there.
” Whoever will disparage the men and women of the armed forces who have put their lives in the forefront, is doing a damage.
“We are dealing with a professional armed,” he said.
The panel led by retired justice Abdu Aboki, Supreme court, thanked the CDS for his co- operation .
(NAN)
