National Human Rights Commission is set to inaugurate a Special Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations in the Implementation of Counter Insurgency Operations in the North East (SIIP-North East). This is contained in a statement issued by NHRC executive secretary Tony Ojukwu.

He said the panel would, among other things, focus on investigating the Reuters report which alleged that the Nigerian Army was involved in the abortion of many pregnancies in the North-East in the last 10 years.

The army was accused of massacring children and carrying out sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the North-East. The army refuted the allegations saying it was a ploy to malign Nigeria’s armed forces.

Mr Ojukwu said the panel would be inaugurated on February 7 at the Bukhari Bello Auditorium, NHRC Headquarters in Abuja.

Members of the panel include Abdu Aboki (retired Supreme Court justice) as chairman, Kemi Okonyedo, representing Women Rights Organisation, Azubuike Nwankenta, representing NBA, retired Maj.-Gen. Letam Wiwa, (military law and intelligence expert), Maisaratu Bakari (consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology (Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital Yola), Fatima Akilu (humanitarian expert representing civil society) and Halima Nuradeen (psychologist representing youths).

Last December, the UN asked President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime to investigate a Reuters report of an existing secret abortion operation run by the Nigerian military for female victims of Boko Haram in the North-East part of the country.

The Chief of Defence Staff, Lucky Irabor, had said of the mass abortion report, “It’s outright nonsense. Their allusion is news to me. It never occurred. I never saw anything like that from Maiduguri down to Maimalamari Cantonment, where I lived, that is a major hospital for our personnel and their family. I am disappointed, to say the least. So it is not true.”

(NAN)