Over a 100, 000 Nigerians have been killed unlawfully in eight years by the various security forces; human rights organisation, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, Intersociety have disclosed.
The organisations said in a statement signed by Emeka Umeagbalasi, Intersociety Board Chairman and Obianuju Joy Igboeli, Head, Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, said defenceless and unarmed individuals have lost their lives directly or indirectly outside the confines of the law.
Imo, Anambra, Enugu, Bayelsa, Rivers, Delta, Kaduna, Abia, Borno, Ebonyi, Edo, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Plateau, Taraba, Niger, Yobe, Bauchi and Adamawa are the worst affected States according to the organisations.
“The ‘indirect deaths’ included those that died from torture and gunshot injuries or those abducted and disappeared; and hunger, starvations and deprivations visited upon their dependants occasioned by their absence.
“Included in this category are victims of the Fulani herdsmen and Jihadist Bandits’ massacre.
“Shockingly, about 70% of the direct dead, tortured, abducted and disappeared victims are found to have belonged to members of the South-East, the South-South and the Old Middle-Belt Christians and non Muslim others.
“The remaining 30% represented the unarmed and defenceless Muslim victims killed or maimed during the Nigerian security forces’ crude counter-insurgency operations in Muslim parts of the North-East States of Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Adamawa, severally captured in the Amnesty International reports,” said the statement.
It added that Nigerian security forces were neutrality and professionalism challenged “having brutally been radicalised, biassed and bastardised, particularly since July 2015.”
The rights group advocated that the security forces be “urgently restructured and their personnel and bosses comprehensively retrained and de-radicalized.”
