The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has said that continuous intimidation and threats to Amnesty International, Nigerian chapter, by the Federal Government is a misguided action, which has the potentials of undermining the nation’s hard-won democratic rule.
CACOL was reacting to the Nigerian Army’s accusation of bias against the international human rights organisation, which was followed by similar riposte by the Presidency through Garba Shehu, spokesman to President Muhammadu Buhari, who accused the organisation of attempts at damaging the morale of the Nigerian Army.
Debo Adeniran, CACOL’s Executive Chairman, in a statement issued by Adegboyega Otunuga, the group’s Coordinator of Media and Publications, advised that military authorities should duly embrace conventional rules while they must cultivate a good working relationship with cognate organisations, both operational in the country and at the international for a better understanding of whatever challenges that may crop up in the course of securing the nation against terror or any other threats to nationhood.
He maintained that Nigeria could not operate in isolation of the global best practices and expect the entire world to continue to play the ostrich under the pretext of ‘territorial integrity.’
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He recalled the nation’s history under the various military regimes and the role international human rights bodies played in curbing abuses and the role they still play till date in ensuring that the military, anywhere in the world, adheres strictly to the Rules of Engagement even in the heightened state of terror and casualty dealt to our gallant fighting men and women.
Adeniran stressed that since the advent of the current administration in 2015, the Amnesty International (AI) had reported in a most graphic form much of the carnage and dastardly murders, kidnappings, etc, of innocent Nigerians carried out by Boko Haram.
Adeniran, who described Boko Haram as one of the most vicious and renegade terrorist groups in the world that operates mostly in Nigeria, stressed that in its 2016 report, Amnesty International reported that the sect carried out at least 65 attacks causing 411 civilian deaths, and abducted at least 73 people.
