The indicted but protected civilian killer commander

By Abdulmumin Giwa

The preliminary report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry JCI has actually indicted the Nigerian Army for not only mass murdering hundreds of unarmed women, children and the aged but also for violating its rules of engagement and all known laws in mass burying their victims.

The Commandant of the 1 Mechanized Division of the Nigerian Army at that time Major General Adeniyi Oyebade was directly the field commander of what could better be described as the Unarmed Civilians Extermination Mission in Zaria from 12th to 14th of December 2015 in which over 1000 members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria IMN were brutally murdered.

In the terror laden operation for which the Army was proud that it displayed gallantry for murdering hundreds of unarmed women and children using all its available heavy weapons on them, the civilian killer commander proudly told the JCI that he was responsible.

The civilian killer commander displayed the peak of inhumanity where IMN members were burned alive, incessantly murdered at close range even while some of them came out and surrendered with their hands up and others were seeking refuge and hiding for days in soak away pits, the IMN property bombed using rocket propelled grenades, women breasts cut with rifle bayonets and punched with sharp objects in their private parts. Some babies were even torn apart with bayonets and thrown into blazing fire by men of the Nigerian Army under his command.

His men chanted anti-Shia slogans as they murdered IMN members as if they were a unit of a Wahhabi terror group or ISIS or Boko Haram. They went round killing the injured people and the medical workers treating them. Many doctors, nurses and first aid workers were brutally butchered by the men under the command of the civilian killer commander in contravention of all local and international known laws. The terror they displayed was such that the only difference between the army then and a conventional terrorist organization was the uniform they wore.

It was not surprising that the Kaduna state government in the name of State Security Council threw a send-off for the civilian killer commander at the Government House because he executed their plot. After the operation he cordoned off the affected areas and took away all bullets and bomb shells and also washed off blood stains and loaded heaps of corpses in trucks while the state government brought in machines to pull down all the bombed buildings to hide evidences.

They pulled down the buildings and packed away the rubbles to unknown locations while they searched round for corpses which they later in the night took to several mass graves locations all in a bid to hide their heinous crimes. The Army and some state officials mass buried the corpses of IMN members with some of them alive and begging to be killed.

The civilian killer commander was the first to use the deceptive term ‘Protective Custody’ which couldn’t make it through the court processes on Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, the IMN leader. He gathered the Wahhabi clerics for a conference to seek their support, bribed them as usual and assured them that he has finished with the Shiites. There and then they praised him and assured him of their support to kill fellow Muslims with who they don’t share the same ideas even though he is a Christian they detest due to intolerance. It was during one of such gatherings that he used the step-brother of the IMN leader Sani Yakubu as his joker to show the world that even a relation of Sheikh Zakzaky was pleased with his action. He also lied to newsmen that Sheikh Zakzaky was fine and would soon speak to the public but it never happened. They kept the IMN revered leader incommunicado for over 500 days now, not even his lawyers were allowed to see him.

They made all efforts to ensure that they hide the mass murder of over 1000 IMN members such that even the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) told the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that he only killed seven people to make his way through when the IMN members attempted killing him. He dramatically smiled at newsmen telling them that he survived it.

They hid the killing before the JCI until the report by the Amnesty International (AI) revealed to the world one of mass graves in which hundreds were mass buried at night by the soldiers to hide the killings. It was the state officials who had no choice after the AI had made everything viral than to reveal to the public that they buried 347 in a mass grave at Mando near Kaduna about 100 kilometers away from the scene of the mass murder.

Even as the JCI had indicted the Army in its preliminary report and reputable human rights organizations in the world that include the AI, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Islamic Human Rights Commission of London (IHRC) have all called on the Nigerian government to come clean on the Zaria Massacre, the government protected the soldiers and is now even promoting them. None of them was arrested or questioned for killing innocent unarmed women, children and the aged.

It is such that even after the cropped up charges that include culpable homicide against some IMN members arrested at the wake of the massacre that is before the Kaduna State High Court, the soldiers have refused to appear before the court and the case is now getting to two years without any soldier appearing as a witness. The only time they were at the court they were not ducked and they hardly spent 10 minutes in the court room when they were allowed to go claiming that they had tight schedules.

Talking about other areas the killer commander had shown his gallantry one would understand the personality he is made of. What is even more painful is that the JCI had indicted the soldiers and asked them to be prosecuted for violating their rules of engagement but the government that instructed the genocide has refused to take any step towards that. Instead it is now promoting the killer machines as a way of rewarding them for murdering thousands of Shiites.

This is not talking about the crimes against humanity also committed on the people of Southern Kaduna and the Birnin Gwari axis in Kaduna state where innocent herdsmen have lost their cows in the name of cow rustling.

Definitely, this agent of the devil and civilian killer commander is one that the IMN will live to remember forever having murdered their relations and loved ones simply because they don’t share the same religious understanding with his commander in chief. What an immoral government that rewards murderers.