Nigerian Army:The Untold story and Unearthing the Truth
An army (from Latin arma “arms, weapons” via Old French armée, “armed” (feminine)) or ground force is a fighting force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps. Within a national military force, the word army may also mean a field army. They differ from army reserves who are activated only during such times as war or natural disasters.
The Armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external and internal aggressors. In broad usage, the terms “armed forces” and “military” are often treated synonymously, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country’s armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces.
The Nigerian army is constitutionally mandated to defend the Nigerian nation and all its people from external and internal aggressions and attacks and to safeguard and protect the territorial integrity of the Nigerian State. Sadly in recent years the Nigerian military of which the Nigerian army is the strongest arm have diggress from this noble responsibility and have become a notorious killing machine that is murdering innocent and defenseless Nigerians.
In the 2015 #US State Department annual human rights report on #Nigeria under the sub-heading of “Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life”, the report stated:
“The government and its agents committed numerous arbitrary and unlawful killings. The national police, army, and other security services committed extrajudicial killings and used lethal and excessive force to apprehend criminals and suspects as well as to disperse protesters. Authorities generally did not hold police, military, or other security force personnel accountable for the use of excessive or deadly force or for the deaths of persons in custody. State and federal panels of inquiry investigating suspicious deaths did not make their findings public.
Security force use of excessive force, including live ammunition, to disperse demonstrators resulted in numerous killings during the year. For example, on December 12, army troops killed an undetermined number–possibly hundreds according to some credible reports–of members of the Shia group Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) in Zaria, Kaduna State, following an altercation at a roadblock that disrupted the convoy of the chief of army staff. IMN leader Sheikh Ibrahim #Zakzaky remained in government custody.”
This article will analyze the negative effects and manifestations of the corrupt practices and wanton extrajudicial killings of innocent and defenseless Nigerians that are associated with the Nigerian army in recent years. To facilitate our study we decided to brake down the topic to the following sub-topics to ease our work and to further clarify the picture. The sub-topics are:
●Nigerian army as sponsors of #BokoHaram
●Nigerian army as bandits to extort Nigerians
●Nigerian army as Enforcers to rig elections
●Nigerian army/navy as Oil bunkerers
●Nigeria army as an imperialist tool
■Nigerian army as sponsors of BokoHaram:
The BokoHaram insurgency started around 2009 when a low-keyed local pretender Muhammad Yusuf became notorious for preaching that “Western education is Haram (prohibited)” and had followership then mainly in the two North-Eastern states of Borno and Yobe states. Muhammad Yusuf was killed on 30th July, 2009 by the Nigerian security agencies in an extrajudicial killings.
The followers of Muhammad Yusuf that survived declared vengeance on the Nigerian state and started attacking local police stations for arms and ammunition. This was the point when the BokoHaram was hijacked by imperialist forces and the rag-tag thugs undergone an exponential transformation to a murderous monster that threatened the entire West African sub-region. The question is how did this transformation took place and who facilitated it?
The Nigerian army Chiefs and military high command played an important role in the exponential transformation of the murderous BokoHaram insurgency that has killed more than 30,000 innocent Nigerians and killed more thousands from neighboring countries. The Nigerian military Chiefs connived with the then political leaders to loot billions of dollars of funds appropriated for the war against BokoHaram. It was either they were buying museum-bound weapons or they were not buying at all. And to fed the insurgency it was either they were dropping weapons and ammunition directly to the murderous thugs or they are “abandoning” heavily-stocked arms depots to the terrorists.
To deceive Nigerians and the world that there was an ongoing war against BokoHaram and to justify the stealing of those funds the Nigerian army then abducted tens of thousands of innocent Nigerians and tortured them to death. This correlate with the report by the London-based human rights body Amnesty International which said that “during the Nigerian army’s scorched-earth response to Boko Haram between 2011 and 2015, more than 8,200 civilians were murdered, starved or tortured to death”.
■Nigerian army as bandits of extortion:
A Kaduna-based non-govermental organization “Centre For Fundamental Rights Protection Initiative” recently released a detailed report backed by graphic pictures and videos of the banditry crimes and atrocities of the Nigerian army and its allied Vigilantes in Kaduna and neighboring states under the military task force to check cattle rustling in the Birnin Gwari axis.
This NGO documented and highlighted rampant cases of extra-judicial killings, extortion, rape, extermination of whole families, organ trafficking and mass Graves against the personnels of the Nigerian army. The NGO wrote in its report: “In our investigations, we discovered that old unused Wells are used as mass Graves to bury the victims of these extra-judicial killings by the Nigerian army personnels in Chikun/Birnin Gwari Local Governments forests. The visit to these locations on 25th June, 2015 was in company of Men of the Homicide and S.A.R.S. Departments of the Nigerian Police Force Headquarters, Kaduna state command. We discovered at least seven (7) of such mass Graves in our investigations and vast remains of people killed extra-judicially by the Nigerian military task force and their Vigilante collaborators.”
■Nigerian army as Enforcers of Elections Rigging:
Election rigging is an epidemic in the Nigerian democratic process where those in control of the institutions of the state uses Nigerian security agencies to rig elections in their favour. The Nigerian army is the most effecient and brutal in enforcing election rigging in Nigerian. The notorious #EkitiGate where the past regime used the Nigerian army to rig the gubernatorial elections of Ekiti state is still fresh in the minds of Nigerians. The leading opposition party in Nigeria recently accused the Nigerian army of been part of the plot by the governing party to rig the elections in River state. In enforcing election rigging hundreds of innocent Nigerians have been killed by the Nigerian army to subvert the will of the electorate.
■Nigerian army/navy as Oil bunkerers:
Nigeria has one of the worst cases of Oil bunkering in the world and this would not have been possible without the active connivance of the Nigerian military who either turned the blind eye for juicy “settlements” or actively engaging in the bunkering of crude Oil for fast money. And because this illegal bunkering cut accross the military high command, no Nigerian military officers have been convicted to this date.
■Nigerian army as an imperialist tool:
The peak of the savagery and barbarity of the Nigerian army was reached when it brutally slaughtered in less than 48 hours close to 1000 defenseless and unarmed Shia Muslims that included hundreds of women and children in the #ZariaMassacre, and dumped their dead bodies in mass Graves 80 KM from the site of the massacre. The Nigerian army murdered these Nigerians to serve the evil imperialist agenda that have the savage Saudi Wahhabi regime as a front.
The London-based human rights organization Amnesty International released a damming report on the Zaria massacre titled “Unearthing the truth: Unlawful killings and mass cover-up in Zaria”. “The true horror of what happened over those two days in Zaria is only now coming to light. Bodies were left littered in the streets and piled outside the mortuary. Some of the injured were burned alive,” said Netsanet Belay, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Director for Africa.
“Our research, based on witness testimonies and analysis of satellite images, has located one possible mass grave. It is time now for the military to come clean and admit where it secretly buried hundreds of bodies.” The Amnesty International official added.
“It is clear that the military not only used unlawful and excessive force against men, women and children, unlawfully killing hundreds, but then made considerable efforts to try to cover-up these crimes,” said Netsanet Belay of Amnesty International.
On a final note, the reason why the Nigerian military continue to commit heinous crimes and atrocities against innocent and defenseless Nigerians is because the internal law mechanism have woefully failed to punish the culprits in the past and this have embolden them to continue with their extrajudicial killings and massacres. The step taken by the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (#IMN) under the leadership of His Eminence Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky to refer the Zaria massacre to the International Criminal Court (ICC) that is based in the Hague is a step in the right direction. Such mechanism will check the excesses of the Nigerian army and enhance its professionalism by eliminating the bad eggs within its ranks and discourage inhuman massacres.
Source: elbinawi. wordpress. com
elbinawi @yahoo. com

too long to read I'm not that jobless

well said! but sadly some people choose to sing praises to them because they see wearing khaki as having power to do whatever you wish. i honestly pray that sense can be restored to those who think killing innocent people is power

Too much of lie and exaggeration. Just don't paint the whole military black. The government are responsible for these crimes not the Nigeria Army as u claim. They are only following orders giving to them. Blame the Politicians. Blame the Religious leaders too. The pastors and imams too. Blame the community leaders. Blame the people in authority.