Amnesty International has called on Nigeria to disclose the findings of a probe that was ordered by the government three years ago into rights abuses committed by security forces.

Following reports made by Amnesty and other rights groups that security forces have been responsible for hundreds of serious human rights violations, including extra-judicial killings, rape, torture, and enforced disappearances, the then-Acting President Yemi Osinbajo set up the Presidential Investigative Panel to probe the abuses in 2017. Osinbajo served as acting president while President Muhammadu Buhari was on a medical trip.

The panel’s report was submitted a year later, but it has never been made public, in a move condemned by Amnesty as “a gross display of contempt for victims.”

“Victims and the larger public in Nigeria deserve to see and scrutinize the findings,” Osai Ojigho, the Nigeria director of Amnesty, said in a statement on Friday.

“We are calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to fulfill the promise he made in 2015 to end impunity by immediately releasing the report,” he added.

Amnesty said it had attended the public hearings of the panel, which were held in several cities in Nigeria, and had made presentations.

The rights organization has blamed the security forces for the extra-judicial executions of 350 Shia Muslims in 2015 and 150 supporters of a separatist group the following year.

In December 2015, reports said soldiers opened fire on Shia Muslims attending a ceremony in a religious center in Zaria. A number of Muslims were killed there. Following the incident, Nigerian forces raided the house of Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), and arrested him.

During the brutal arrest, Zakzaky was beaten and lost vision in his left eye. His wife sustained serious wounds, and more than 300 of his followers were killed by the government forces in what became known as the Zaria Massacre.

The Nigerian government also banned the IMN, whose members regularly take to the streets of the capital, Abuja, to call for the release of their leader, Zakzaky.

Source: Presstv

Gunmen have killed 13 people in an attack on a farming community in central Nigeria in the latest deadly violence to rip through the region, police said today.

A further 10 people were injured in the shooting in the village of Gbajimba yesterday morning, which Benue state police spokesman Daniel Ezeala blamed on Hausa-speaking Fulani herdsmen.

“The residents of the community, who are mainly Tiv farmers, tried to repel the attack,” he told AFP.

“Thirteen people lost their lives, while 10 were injured and several houses were burnt by the attackers.”

Violence over grazing rights is common in Nigeria and particularly in the so-called Central Belt, where the mainly Christian south meets the largely Muslim north. The Tiv are Christian and Fulani are Muslim.

At least 100 people were killed in Kaduna state earlier this month when assailants armed with guns and machetes stormed local villages.

Fulani leaders have for years complained about the loss of grazing land which is crucial to their livelihood, with resentment between the herdsmen and their agrarian neighbors rising over the past decade.

Two weeks ago, the Benue state governor, Gabriel Suswam, narrowly escaped death during a visit to a camp for victims of violence when his convoy was ambushed by suspected Fulani gunmen.

Tit-for-tat communal violence between herdsmen and farmers is thought to have claimed tens of thousands of lives in the region since the early 1990s, according to international rights groups.

(Source: AFP)

Armed gangs killed 57 people in a string of attacks on villages in northwest Nigeria, residents said on Wednesday, as security forces struggle to curb violence in the region.

Roughly 150 gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on residents before looting shops and stealing cattle in a series of assaults on Tuesday in six remote communities in Katsina state, the sources said.

“We lost a total of 57 people in the attacks across the six villages,” a local leader told AFP on condition of anonymity as he feared for his safety. 

In the worst-hit village of Kadisau the assailants – dubbed “bandits” by locals – shot and killed 33 people, local resident Mohammed Salisu said.

Salisu said he escaped by abandoning his motorcycle and hiding in a ditch before crawling into a nearby house where he hid among dirty laundry for the five hours the attack and looting lasted.

“They looted every shop in the village and took away over 200 cattle,” said Salisu, who lost seven cows to the attackers.

The attackers opened fire on a football pitch where young men were watching a local match, said Sada Audi, a resident of nearby village said.

Residents said 24 more people were later killed across the villages of Hayin Kabalawa, Garke, Makera, Kwakwere and Maiganguna.

The assailants left two dozen people with bullet wounds, inhabitants said.

Nigeria’s northwest has been wracked by years of violence, involving clashes between rival communities over land, attacks by heavily armed criminal gangs and retaliation strikes from vigilante groups.

The unrest, which experts say has been spurred by overpopulation and climate change, has seen an estimated 8,000 people killed since 2011 and 200,000 flee their homes.

Nigeria’s military last month said it had launched air raids to halt a spike of attacks in President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state of Katsina.

Authorities have carried out several security operations and local peace negotiations in the region but have failed to end the bloodshed. 

Source: AFP

Gunmen killed 47 people in attacks on villages in the northwestern Nigerian state of Katsina in the early hours of Saturday, local police said.

“Armed bandits”, some of whom wielded AK 47 guns, carried out the attacks, Katsina police said in a statement on Sunday.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the last year by criminal gangs carrying out robberies and kidnappings in northwest Nigeria.

Such attacks have added to security challenges in Africa’s most populous country, which is already struggling to contain Islamist insurgencies in the northeast and communal violence over grazing rights in central states.

Gunmen, some with AK 47 guns, carried out the attacks in three local government authorities in the state in the early hours of Saturday between 12:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) and around 3 a.m., Katsina police said in its statement.

“There was reports of organised and simultaneous attacks in villages in Danmusa, Dutsenma and Safana by groups of armed bandits,” the statement said of some of the attacks.

“Detachments of Police, Nigerian Army, Nigeria Airforce, Civil Defence and DSS (Department of State Services) have been drafted to the area,” it added.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in a statement, said he would not tolerate large scale killing of innocent people by criminal gangs.

“In line with my commitment to security of the people, these attacks will be met with decisive force,” said Buhari, who is from Katsina.

(REUTERS)

Africa’s largest city Lagos was deserted Tuesday after Nigeria locked down its economic hub and shuttered its capital, in the continent’s latest effort to brake the juggernaut of coronavirus.

Businesses were closed, markets abandoned and streets empty as the usually chaotic megacity of 20 million, along with the capital Abuja, shuddered to a halt on the first full day of a two-week shutdown.

Police in protective equipment manned checkpoints, trucks carrying non-essential items were turned back and youths were spotted playing football on a usually traffic-clogged highway.

“It is like putting people in prison,” minibus taxi driver Mutiu Adisa told AFP.

“I don’t know how people can survive for two weeks without working to make money.”

Nigeria embarked late Monday on one of Africa’s most ambitious efforts at social distancing after recording 135 confirmed cases and two deaths.

Enforcing the stay-at-home order in the overcrowded slums of Lagos will be a mammoth challenge as millions of poor depend on their daily earnings to survive.

Officials insist the draconian measures are needed urgently to ward off an explosion in infections that could easily overwhelm the weak health system in Africa’s most populous nation.

“To reduce the number of people with coronavirus, we know they need to stop movement,” 60-year-old engineer Ogun Nubi Victor told AFP.

“But there in no money for the citizens, people are just sitting at home, with nothing to eat.”

In an attempt to ease the pain, Lagos state authorities have pledged to supply basic food rations to some 200,000 of the city’s neediest households.

– Lockdowns and brutality –

Across all of Africa, countries have recorded more than 5,300 cases and 170 deaths, according to a tally compiled by AFP.

Tanzania on Tuesday became the latest nation to record its first fatality from the novel coronavirus.

The numbers have lagged behind those of other continents, and as of Monday, there were still six countries out of 54 in Africa — South Sudan, Burundi, Sao Tome and Principe, Malawi, Lesotho and the Comoros — that had yet to detect a single case.

But experts have repeatedly warned of Africa’s vulnerability, describing its many conflicts, poor sanitation, packed urban slums and under-equipped hospitals as sources of potential catastrophe.

Dozens of countries across the continent have imposed restrictions from night-time curfews to total shutdowns to try to halt the disease.

Uganda on Tuesday was also waking up to lockdown after President Yoweri Museveni ordered his east African nation to shut up shop immediately.

The Republic of Congo was gearing up to follow suit later in the day and Botswana’s president ordered a state of emergency from midnight on Thursday.

But growing reports of brutality from security forces in some nations have highlighted the challenges of enforcing the draconian measures.

The police watchdog in South Africa, on lockdown since last week, said Monday it was investigating an officer for allegedly killing a man who defied the regulations.

The country’s defence minister also condemned “any type of abuse” by security forces after videos on social media showed civilians forced to squat or roll on the ground.

The regional powerhouse, which has the highest numbers of confirmed infections on the continent, will start mass door-to-door screening and testing for infections, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday.

The “unprecedented” exercise will be launched in the next few days, with at least 10,000 field workers deployed across the country of 57 million people, he said in an address to the nation.

“We are now entering a new phase in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic,” Ramaphosa said.

Source:  AFP

At least 70 Nigerian soldiers were killed in a jihadist ambush, military and security sources said Tuesday.

Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a lorry carrying troops as it travelled near Gorgi village in Borno state on Monday, two military officers told AFP without giving their names.

“It was a huge loss, at least 70 soldiers have perished in the ambush,” one of the officers said.

“The terrorists specifically targeted a truck loaded with soldiers with RPGs and incinerated the vehicle, killing all on board,” a second officer said.

“So far 70 bodies have been recovered but the toll is certainly more than that as rescue operation is still underway.”

Several soldiers were injured and some others taken captive by the jihadists, the two officers said.

A spokesman for the Nigerian army told AFP that he was unable to comment on the reported attack.

The convoy had left regional capital Maiduguri on its way to launch an offensive on a camp belonging to jihadists affiliated to the Islamic State group in the area, a member of a government-backed militia fighting the insurgents told AFP.

The Islamic State West Africa Province faction split from Boko Haram insurgents in 2016 and has focused on attacking troops, raiding bases and laying ambush on military convoys.

The group has been accused of increasing attacks on civilians and taking hostages at bogus checkpoints on main roads in the region.

The decade-long conflict has killed 36,000 people and displaced 1.8 million in the northeast of Nigeria.

Fighting has also spilt over the border into neighbouring countries, prompting the formation of a regional military coalition to fight the insurgents.

(AFP)