Despite protestations from Nigerians, civil society, the human rights community and even the toothless National Assembly, the Nigerian military has gone ahead with its Operation Positive Identification (OPI). The operation would entail citizens being stopped and asked for identification. This, according to the army, is to “checkmate banditry, kidnappers, armed robbers, ethnic militias, cattle rustlers as well as other sundry crimes across the various regions of Nigeria.
However, citizens and the human rights community have complained that OPI is just another excuse to violate human rights, restrict freedom of movement and militarise the society. This is a society, mind you, where many people do not have any means of identification like the National Identity Cards, the Nigerian International Passport, drivers’ licence or even voters’ card. This, in their view, would amount to the army criminalising non possession of valid national identity card, which isn’t backed by law. Besides, they question the effectiveness of fighting crime by stopping people on the road and demanding valid identification cards. It hasn’t worked before and there is no evidence to suggest it will work now.
However, the army has insisted OPI is the only way it can effectively fight crimes in the society. “There is no label on Boko Haram terrorists other than intelligence and this means of identifying people,” a military spokesman said recently.
Just as the operation took off, a video began to circulate on social media showing military personnel executing a bound man and burying him in a shallow grave they dug themselves. From the voices in the video, the incident happened in Maiduguri and one of the soldiers could be heard admonishing his colleagues to dehumanise the suspect before executing him.
This is exactly the fears in the human rights community in Nigeria. The Nigerian military certainly has a rich form in extra-judicial tortures and killings.
On December 12, 2015, some members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) were doing their normal procession in Zaria and blocked the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Burutai. After some altercations, the army promptly mowed them down and for added measure, levelled their Hussainiyya centre, brutalised and arrested the leader of the group, Ibraheem Zakzaky and his wife. To cover up the gruesome killings, the army took away the corpses of those killed, set fire on them and buried them in mass graves.
When the news broke, the military attempted to lie its way through, accusing the sect of trying to assassinate the Chief of Army Staff and denying that the army massacred a large number of the group’s members. However, a panel set up by the Kaduna state government to investigate the killings finally indicted the Nigerian army for the Zaria massacre. The Kaduna state government confirmed to the panel that 347 IMN members were killed and buried in secret mass graves. Specifically, the panel indicted Maj. General Adeniyi Oyebade, the General Officer Commanding the Nigerian Army’s 1st Division in Kaduna for authorising the operation.
This is a society…where many people do not have any means of identification like the National Identity Cards, the Nigerian International Passport, drivers’ licence or even voters’ card. This, in their view, would amount to the army criminalising non possession of valid national identity card, which isn’t backed by law
The Panel stopped short of indicting the Chief of Army Staff General Burutai who also bears responsibility for, and has defended, the killings on several occasions. From the videos of the encounter between the army Chief’s convoy and the sect members, it was clear the situation does not require the use of lethal force. Teargas, at worse, could have been used to dislodge them. But the army chose to massacre them, destroyed their centre and have continued to detain its leader illegally for having the effrontery to stand in its way. As the Panel rightly found out, the killings are a crime against humanity and those responsible should be brought to justice.
However, in a bizarre twist, the Kaduna state government banned the IMN from operating in Kaduna instead of pushing for the punishment of all those indicted. Also, security agencies have begun a systematic cleansing of the group in major states in Nigeria. Consequently, the group’s members have been brutally maimed and killed in Jos, Abuja, Kano, and Katsina while protesting government’s actions against the group and the continued unlawful detention of their leader, his wife and other members of the group since their arrest in 2015.
The killing of IMN members protesting the continued detention of their leader in Abuja some few months ago is a continuation of the brutal campaign against the group.
Also, in May 2017, Amnesty International released a report, backed by videos, photographs and eye witness accounts showing that between August 2015 and August 2016, “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.” The report, “a product of intense investigation comprising 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.”
According to the report, “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.”
But the authorities do not care. In fact, the army in most cases, acts on direct orders to shoot and kill innocent civilians without recourse to the law courts.
A fundamental question is why the army has displaced the police in fighting crime and internal security management? Years of military rule and intolerance for the existence of a rival force has led to the whittling down of the powers, functions and capability of the police and the ascendancy of the military in internal security management. That is yet to change even with the return to democratic rule. By 2023, Nigeria would have had 24 years unbroken democratic governance. But 16 of those years have been superintended by former military dictators who supervised the destruction of the police in the first place.
But there is now a snag: as the military continually deploy its weapons against unarmed civilians, it is losing the ability to perform its primary function – the defence of the country against external aggression and even internal insurrection. It struggled badly to contain the Niger Delta insurgency until the government found a political solution. Now faced with an armed insurgency since 2009 that has exposed its inefficiency and lack of capacity, it has now resorted to prayers to defeat the enemy.
