An investigation by Reuters has indicted the Nigerian Army for carrying out illegal abortions on pregnant victims of terrorism in the North-East.
According to the report, the Nigerian military runs a secret programme which has ended at least 10,000 pregnancies without consent of women who had been kidnapped, raped or forcefully married to terrorists in the North-East.
The victims, including those as young as 12, were said to have been deceived into taking pills and injections that ended their pregnancies under the false assurance that the medication was to restore their health.
“In some instances, women who resisted were beaten, caned, held at gunpoint or drugged into compliance. Others were tied or pinned down as abortion drugs were inserted into them,” the report said.
The report read in part that the scheme, intended to rid society of terrorists’ descendants, has been running secretly by the military since 2013 and resulted in several fatalities since then.
Reuters noted that the abortions by the Army were carried out in several military and civilian facilities in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa.
Reacting to the allegations, head of the counter-insurgency campaign in the North-East, Christopher Musa, said there were no such programmes being run in Nigeria.
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“Everybody respects lives, we respect families. We respect women and children. We respect every living soul,” he said.
The Army also released a statement signed by the Director, Defence Information Jimmy Akpor, describing the report as efforts to blackmail the Nigerian Army through mercenary journalism.
“The fictitious series of stories actually constitute a body of insults on the Nigerian peoples and cultures that still cherish life,” the statement read.
Akpor noted that the Nigerian Army would never contemplate running such a scheme and were trained to protect lives rather than take it.
“If there was an evil illegal programme to systematically kill the children of Boko Haram terrorists, then the children that the terrorists begat through the Chibok girls would have been prime targets,” Akpor noted. (ICIR)
