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Mynd44:
https://www.nairaland.com/3482762/nigeria-security-forces-killed-150

Take it to the front-page then. This thread was created cos none of you wanted to push the other threads to the fp

Lalasticlala

Why the mods will not let this thread hit the front-page amazes me. While trivail topics like "who wore it better", "see what celebrity X wore to Y" and other random nonsensical stuff are rushed to the FP

Lalasticlala

Lovely! Igbo amaka. Igbo is beautiful. We have to be proud of and promote our own culture. LIKE if you love Omenani Ndigbo.

GMBuhari:
Amnesty international's report

Submitted to BBC blog by a flat head


Nice one


So amnesty international is not concerned about boko haram and Nigerian army anymore?

It's a shame how you let your humanity to be compromised by tribalism and irrational hatred. Indeed the wickedness and heartlessness of men surprise the devil himself.

A More Detailed Account by Amnesty International

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/

The Nigerian security forces, led by the military, embarked on a chilling campaign of extrajudicial executions and violence resulting in the deaths of at least 150 peaceful pro-Biafra protesters in the south east of the country, according to an investigation by Amnesty International published today.

Analysis of 87 videos, 122 photographs and 146 eye witness testimonies relating to demonstrations and other gatherings between August 2015 and August 2016 consistently shows that the military fired live ammunition with little or no warning to disperse crowds. It also finds evidence of mass extrajudicial executions by security forces, including at least 60 people shot dead in the space of two days in connection with events to mark Biafra Remembrance Day.

“This deadly repression of pro-Biafra activists is further stoking tensions in the south east of Nigeria. This reckless and trigger-happy approach to crowd control has caused at least 150 deaths and we fear the actual total might be far higher,” said Makmid Kamara, Interim Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.

“The Nigerian government’s decision to send in the military to respond to pro-Biafra events seems to be in large part to blame for this excessive bloodshed. The authorities must immediately launch an impartial investigation and bring the perpetrators to book.”

Since August 2015, there has been a series of protests, marches and gatherings by members and supporters of IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) who have been seeking the creation of a Biafran state. Tensions increased further following the arrest of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu on 14 October 2015. He remains in detention.
Extrajudicial executions

By far the largest number of pro-Biafra activists were killed on Biafra Remembrance Day on 30 May 2016 when an estimated 1,000 IPOB members and supporters gathered for a rally in Onitsha, Anambra State. The night before the rally, the security forces raided homes and a church where IPOB members were sleeping.

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.

Ngozi (not her real name), a 28-year-old mother of one, told Amnesty International that her husband left in the morning to go to work but called her shortly afterwards to say that the military had shot him in his abdomen. He said he was in a military vehicle with six others, four of whom were already dead. She told Amnesty International: “he started whispering and said they just stopped [the vehicle]. He was scared they would kill the remaining three of them that were alive... He paused and told me they were coming closer. I heard gunshots and I did not hear a word from him after that.”

The next day Ngozi searched for her husband and finally found his body in a nearby mortuary. The mortuary attendants told her that the military had brought him and six others. She saw three gunshot wounds: one in his abdomen and two in his chest, which confirmed her fear that the military had executed him.

Amnesty International has also reviewed videos of a peaceful gathering of IPOB members and supporters at Aba National High School on 9 February 2016. The Nigerian military surrounded the group and then fired live ammunition at them without any prior warning.

According to eyewitnesses and local human rights activists, many of the protesters at Aba were rounded up and taken away by the military. On 13 February 13 corpses, including those of men known to have been taken by the military, were discovered in a pit near the Aba highway.

“It is chilling to see how these soldiers gunned down peaceful IPOB members. The video evidence shows that this was a military operation with intent to kill and injure,” said Makmid Kamara.
Deadly repression

Eyewitness testimony and video footage of the rallies, marches and meetings demonstrate that the Nigerian military deliberately used deadly force.

In many of the incidents detailed in the report, including the Aba High School protest, the military applied tactics designed to kill and neutralize an enemy, rather than to ensure public order at a peaceful event.

[b]All IPOB gatherings documented by Amnesty International were largely peaceful. [/b]In those cases where there were pockets of violence, it was mostly in reaction to shooting by the security forces. Eyewitnesses told Amnesty International that some protesters threw stones, burned tyres and in one incident shot at the police. Regardless, these acts of violence and disorder did not justify the level of force used against the whole assembly.

Amnesty International’s research also shows a disturbing pattern of hundreds of arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment by soldiers during and after IPOB events, including arrests of wounded victims in hospital, and torture and other ill-treatment of detainees.

Vincent Ogbodo (not his real name), a 26-year-old trader, said he was shot on Remembrance Day in Nkpor and hid in a gutter. When soldiers found him they poured acid on him. He told Amnesty International:

“I covered my face. I would have been blind by now. He poured acid on my hands. My hands and body started burning. The flesh was burning… They dragged me out of the gutter. They said I’ll die slowly.”

A man who was detained in Onitsha Barracks after the Remembrance Day shooting on 30 May 2016 told Amnesty International: “Those in the guard room [detention] were flogged every morning. The soldiers tagged it ‘Morning Tea’.”
No action by authorities to ensure accountability

Despite this overwhelming evidence that the Nigerian security forces committed gross human rights violations including extrajudicial executions and torture, no investigations have been carried out by the authorities.

A similar pattern of lack of accountability for gross violations by the military has been documented in other parts of Nigeria including the north east in the context of operations against Boko Haram.

“Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the government of Nigeria to initiate independent investigations into evidence of crimes under international law, and President Buhari has repeatedly promised that Amnesty International’s reports would be looked into. However, no concrete steps have been taken,” said Makmid Kamara.

In the very rare cases where an investigation is carried out, there is no follow up. As a result of the apparent lack of political will to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of such crimes, the military continues to commit human rights violations and grave crimes with impunity.

In addition to investigations, the Nigerian government must ensure adequate reparations for the victims, including the families. They should end all use of military in policing demonstrations and ensure the police are adequately instructed, trained and equipped to deal with crowd-control situations in line with international law and standards. In particular, firearms must never be used as a tool for crowd control.

Background

The findings of this report involved an analysis of 87 videos and 122 photographs showing IPOB gatherings and members of security forces in the process of committing violations and victims of these violations. 193 interviews were conducted.

On 30 September 2016, Amnesty International shared the key findings of this report with the Federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Army Staff, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Interior, Inspector General of Police and the Director-General of the state Security Services. Responses were received from the Attorney General and Inspector General of Police but neither answered the questions raised in the report.

IPOB emerged in 2012 and campaigns for an Independent Biafran state. Almost fifty years ago, an attempt to establish Biafra state led to a civil war from 1967 to 1970.

Nigeria's security forces have killed more than 150 peaceful protesters since August 2015, a human rights group has claimed.

Amnesty International said the military used live ammunition and deadly force against pro-Biafra protesters who were campaigning for an independent state in the south-east.

Nigeria's police denies allegations that it used unnecessary force.

The country's army said Amnesty was trying to tarnish its reputation.

Amnesty's report is based on interviews with almost 200 people, alongside more than 100 photographs and 87 videos.

Among the allegations contained in the report are what Amnesty called "extrajudicial executions", when 60 people were shot and killed in south-eastern Onitsha city, in the two days surrounding Biafra Remembrance Day in May 2016.

"This reckless and trigger-happy approach to crowd control has caused at least 150 deaths, and we fear the actual total might be far higher" said Makmid Kamara, Amnesty's interim director for Nigeria.

Other victims detailed in the report include a 26-year-old man who was shot in Nkpor, but hid in a gutter, still alive. He said when soldiers found him, they poured acid over him, and told him he would die slowly.




Another woman said she had been speaking to her husband on a mobile phone when he told her he had been shot in the abdomen. He was calling from a military vehicle, she said, and she heard gunshots. She later found his body in a morgue with two more wounds in his chest, leading her to believe he had been executed after the call.
'Unimaginable atrocities'

The human rights organisation said pro-Biafra protests had been "largely peaceful" despite occasional incidents of protesters throwing stones and burning tyres - and one occasion when someone shot at police.

"Regardless, these acts of violence and disorder did not justify the level of force used against the whole assembly."

But army spokesman Sani Usman that "the military and other security agencies exercised maximum restraints despite the flurry of provocative and unjustifiable violence".



The two main secessionist groups in the south-east, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, had committed "unimaginable atrocities", he said.

This included burning and killing people from other parts of Nigeria and forcing them to flee, Col Usman added.

In the past year there has been a series of protests to demand the creation of the state of Biafra in the south-east, home to the Igbo people.

Prominent IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu has been detained without trial since October 2015, with the government defying a court order to release him.

Analysis: Martin Patience, BBC News, Lagos

The mention of Biafra continues to trigger powerful emotions in Nigeria - and memories of the country's darkest chapter.

In 1967, nationalists attempted to create the independent state of Biafra in the south-east. It was to be a homeland for the Igbo people, one of the country's largest ethnic groups.

But the bid for independence plunged the nation into a three-year civil war that killed at least a million people.

Almost 50 years on and the bitterness of that period still lingers. Many Igbos claim they are still being punished for the conflict.

In the past year that anger has manifested itself in a younger generation who have staged a wave of protests, fuelled, in part, by high unemployment and anger about official corruption - issues that are hardly unique to the Igbos.

But IPOB appears to have gained momentum after the Nigerian authorities detained Mr Kanu, accusing him of treason.

It is this heavy-handed approach, say human rights groups, that is inflaming the tensions.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38087836

Lovely. Igbo boys doing Africa proud.

Smh for Nairaland when a topic like this https://www.nairaland.com/3471387/daniella-okeke-shows-off-backside is on the front-page but a thread like this one isn't

Lalasticlala, Seun

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Nigeria: The intersection of inept leadership and docile followership by Chinedu George Nnawetanma


It was the great novelist Chinua Achebe, widely regarded as the torchbearer of the modern African literature, who declared in his seminal work, The Trouble with Nigeria, that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” He went further to add that “there is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.”

Professor Achebe wasn’t mincing words when he made that germane contribution to Nigeria’s existential discourse. There is indeed nothing wrong with the Nigerian character, nor with the land or the climate. As a case in point, many other countries that share similar topography and climate with us, such as Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia, are doing so much better than us in almost every index utilized in assessing the quality of life. It is a pity that 33 years after its publication, Nigeria still grapples with the very same challenges explored in The Trouble With Nigeria.

However, there is an often-overlooked dimension to it all. It was the French lawyer and philosopher, Joseph de Maistre, who opined that “every nation gets the government it deserves.” It is one thing for a country’s leadership class to be seemingly perpetually plagued with utter ineptitude and it is entirely another for a citizenry to tolerate it for so long.

Twenty-nine years of intermittent military rule preceded by almost a century of colonialism may have had a lasting, transgenerational psychological effect on the Nigerian populace wherein they perceive individuals in positions of authority as demigods who ought to be worshipped, adored, feared and celebrated, instead of the public servants that they truly are.

It was Anthony Hamilton Millard Kirk-Greene, a British historian, who, in his compilation of documentary records of the amalgamation of Nigeria by Lord Lugard, described the instruments necessary for the successful working of the Nigerian system as ignorance, fear and military terrorism. With what has been the norm since their departure, it is difficult to argue against the possibility that this template was handed down by the British to their anointed successors upon the country’s independence in 1960.

Since its establishment as a country, civil disobedience and revolts in Nigerian have often been met with brutal repressions by the ruling class and their armed agencies. The Ekumeku Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western Igboland, the Women’s War of 1929 in the southeastern Nigerian city of Aba, the Coal miners’ Uprising of 1949 in the then Eastern Nigerian regional capital of Enugu and the pro-Biafra protests of 2016 are just a few instances of these.

Consequently, the Nigerian citizens have become apprehensive about holding their government accountable by pressing for their rights, electing instead to endure whatever comes their way, a learned helplessness that has earned them the infamous “suffering and smiling” tag. Even more worrying is the ethno-religious dimension wherein some sections of the country align with leaders of the same ethnicity or faith come rain or shine to spite perceived rival groups and to take their own slice of the so-called national cake, a situation that has only been exploited by the ruling class to wreak more havoc and consolidate their power and influence.

Nigeria will never be emancipated from its existential crisis and perennial doldrums as long as the callousness of its leaders is matched by the indifference, timidity and aloofness of the followers. Robert H. Jackson, a former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, once said that “it is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.”

Those words are probably truer for the present-day Nigeria than they ever were for a 1950s America. Perhaps, not since the Civil War has the country had it so bad. Economic recession, insecurity, insurgency, secession, disintegration, impunity, corruption, nepotism, ethnic chauvinism and bigotry are words that have become all too familiar to the average Nigerian and hover like a dark cloud over their daily lives, thanks to a maladroit government. And it will only get worse until each and every Nigerian wakes up to their responsibility of keeping their government at all levels alive to their statutory responsibilities, even if it resorts to staring down the barrel of a gun.

Chinedu George Nnawetanma writes from Enugu via chinnawetanma@gmail.com

http://ynaija.com/opinion-nigeria-intersection-inept-leadership-docile-followership/

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