Published 8th Dec, 2022

By Joseph Adeiye

Lucky Irabor, Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, has said that he won’t investigate a report accusing the Nigerian Army of carrying out forceful abortions on pregnant victims of terrorists.

Days before the report was released, the Defence Headquarters issued a press release denying all the allegations levelled against them, calling the report “fictitious” and “dreamt up”.

Reuters had released an investigative report on Wednesday, claiming that the army had made over 10,000 abortions on girls and women who were impregnated by Boko Haram terrorists since 2013.

Irabor told reporters in Abuja that the military “will not investigate what you know is not true” when they asked him for comments at a news conference addressing insurgency, terrorism, and banditry in the country on Thursday.

“I don’t think I should waste my energy in such things,” Irabor said.

The investigative report in question had relied on the narration of victims, healthcare workers and soldiers from within army barracks in Maiduguri.

A guard also corroborated the witnesses’ claims. This guard told the reporters that the abortions took place within military facilities and away from public eyes.

“We do this kind of procedure to them in order to save them from the stigma or the problem that will arise in the future,” a health worker told investigative reporters. “…we normally leave them restrained by tying their legs and their hands on a bed. [and if] they’re restless on the bed, so that we cannot perform our procedure, we normally give them mild sedation so they will go to sleep.”

There were also documentation and hospital records which showed that the victims were once held in military facilities.

“There are those who are given pills,” a soldier said.

“There are those who, they open their thighs and they put something in there and twist it, like those things butchers use, like scissors, they push it inside and twist it. You’ll see her scream as they’re moving it inside of her.”

Another soldier said that one young lady bled to death after a pill was given to her.

The soldier had given her a piece of cloth to stop the bleeding between her legs but the blood loss was too much. He admitted that he helped to bury her and said that he could not forget the girl.

The Nigerian Army had been previously accused of child detention in its fight against terrorism.

Irabor’s response to such grave accusations of human rights violations within the Nigerian military was a surprise to many.

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