No matter how it is looked at and the efforts at downplaying it, the report by Amnesty International on the bestiality of the Nigerian Army against members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), in the last one year, is a bad publicity for the country.
The report, released last week, covered the atrocities of the soldiers on their own people between August 2025 and August 2016. It put members of IPOB killed by the soldiers within the period at over 150.
What is startling is that the Amnesty account of the situation was not based on hearsay, nor conjecture. It rather relied on the analysis of 87 videos, 122 photographs and 146 eye witness testimonies, all revealing soldiers of the Nigeria military firing live ammunition to disperse IPOB members whose only offence is demanding a separate independent state of Biafra.
A chilling aspect of the report is on how, at least 60 defenceless IPOB protesters were shot dead within two days leading to the Biafra Remembrance Day of May 29, 2016.
“On Remembrance Day itself, the security forces shot people in several locations. Amnesty International has not been able to verify the exact number of extrajudicial executions, but estimates that at least 60 people were killed and 70 injured in these two days. The real number is likely to be higher,” the organisation revealed in a statement accompanying the report.
It also captured the gory incidence of massacre of the members of the organisation in Aba, Abia State, earlier in February.
The Army has labored to debunk the report, describing it as an attempt to tarnish the reputation of Nigerian security forces. A statement from its public relations, accused IPOB of attacking security agents and molesting Nigerians from other parts of the country.
But this is a far as the soldiers can go in their denial and justification of the massacre of the IPOB protesters.
The fact is that some may not be in agreement with the agenda of IPOB, others may disagree with its strategy or context of its agitation but not many can sincerely accuse members of the organisation of employing violence in going about their mission.
If the soldiers justify their action on the command and control nature of their job, especially in an analogue setting as ours, that may stand as a fair explanation, though not acceptable to contemporary rules of engagement.
But to accuse an organisation that has at all-time professed and manifested non-violence in its activities, can hardly be convincing to even elementary minds.
The problem of understanding IPOB and hence the massive mobilization of brutality against its members, has a lot in common with the “us and them” disposition of the Nigerian leadership on issues confronting the nation.
It is this terrible mindset that has blinded the authorities of the Nigerian state on the reasons behind the agitation by IPOB and Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). It is a question of injustice and inequity.
Since the end of the Civil War in 1970, the south east has been on the receiving end of marginalisation from successive administrations in the land. Aside near absence of federal infrastructure in the area, appointment of indigenes of the zone into offices, has not been commensurate with their counterparts from other parts of the country.
Previous administrations, had in going about the nauseating trend, applied some diplomacy. But none had been as audacious in manifesting the animosity towards the people as the current Muhammadu Buhari government. In words and deeds, the President has put up demonstrations that sell the impression that he has an axe to grind with the people.
Incidentally, the youths from the east, are not blind to these unfriendly dispositions. Thus, convinced that they are not wanted in the Nigeria Project, the dream of an independent state of Biafra where their future would be secured, becomes an immediate attraction.
The idea may be utopian, as some have said. There are some who even insist that the geography and circumstances of the Biafra of 1967 – 1970 no longer exist, to warrant the IPOB agenda. Some also argue that a new template in seeking autonomy from an existing entity, has overtaken the traditional approach of street protest.
But all the views in this respect, perhaps, border more on the strategies adopted by IPOB and not the justness of its demand.
What is therefore needed in getting around the issue is dialogue, particularly given that the strong arm tactics adopted by the government in forcing the boys to drop their agenda, has not yielded any positive result.
It may not be out of point to state that the IPOB agitation for a free Biafra has become an ideology of sort, given the insistence of the members on the issue, even in the face of unrelenting assault on them by members of the armed forces. In a situation as this, the activists seem ready to die for their belief.
But the President does not seem to see things from this angle. For him, rather, the indivisibility and indissolubility of Nigeria, by whatever form or nature, are issues that should not even be mentioned in any discussion.
He expressed this ample disdain to the issue during a visit to the palace of the Emir of Katsina, in May, when he maintained that it was better for Nigerians to commit mass suicide than for the actualization of the breakaway state of Biafra.
“We will not let that happen. For Nigeria to divide now, it is better for all of us to jump into the sea and get drowned,” he reportedly said.
This may be the body language the soldiers are interpreting in their clampdown on IPOB members. This may explain the ferocity of their attacks on the defenceless protesters.
But this is against the tide of contemporary international relations where the principles of consultation and compromise hold sway. It also sounds awkward that while the government deploys men and resources to woo murderous Boko Haram terrorists in the North East for a dialogue and has been serially duped in the process, it derives pleasure in its soldiers mowing armless street protesters in the south east.
This regular senseless ejaculation of might by the Buhari administration against a particular section of the country, cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged. It is high time the leadership of the Igbo, if it really exists, took up this matter of gross human rights violation and out right genocide with appropriate international organisations, since it has become clear that there are no avenues for getting justice for the people within the context of present Nigerian state.
In the Amnesty International report, Nigeria remains scandalized in the eyes of civilized nations.
In the 150 souls dispatched to early graves for merely expressing their rights to association, Nigeria diminishes in essence and substance.
And by that bizarre action, the Buhari administration widens the gulf of mistrust already held against it by the people of the south east.
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