An undated 44-second video clip showing Nigerian soldiers manhandling three women, a little girl and a baby has been circulating on WhatsApp and X.

FIJ saw confirmation of the event by a soldier serving in the Nigerian army on Thursday.

“It’s a very old video from an advance (the orders have been done already). They (the women) saw the advance team, ran back to camp and informed their men that soldiers were coming,” the unnamed soldier wrote on X.

“BH (Boko Haram) laid ambush and dropped some men, then the BH ran and left the informants in their camp with children (presumably the BH families). Not justifying the video in any way. They let the tension of the losses get in their way of rational thinking. I don’t see why the record is even needed during such a dangerous moment either.”

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The video in question appeared in a post on X, and the author of the post said the video was from a Fulani group chat on WhatsApp.

Soldiers kicked and knocked down women suspected to be informants, even as one carried a baby on her back. A little girl looked on.

Reactions to the video varied from disgust for the unprofessional conduct of the soldiers to comments on some women colluding with terrorists.

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“Once NGOs are sharing food to IDP camps, they’ll leave the bushes and come out to collect whatever the NGOs are sharing, even buy some from other women and smuggle back to the bushes to their men,” the soldier continued on the subject of colluding informants.

“Some of them give info to Boko Haram in exchange for bags of charcoal and firewood. It’s just unfortunate that videos like this one shouldn’t be out on media spaces because the first thing that’s ring is ‘innocent women and their children.’”

The soldier’s statement infers that the army has more videos of the same nature where armless suspects are manhandled and threatened. Those videos are simply guarded and kept away from the prying eyes of journalists.

Nigeria continues its decades-long fight against terrorism. Military misdemeanours such as manhandling, subjecting suspects to torture and the manslaughter of innocent civilians often go unreported or unnoticed.