A contact in Nigeria explained to me: “The Nigerian army is always complicit in jihad. They even actively help him. Most of the time these attacks happen near the army commando headquarters and they always house the terrorists who always have military grade weapons. When they say that more than 90% of Nigerian Security is from the Northern Region, they tell you that at least 70% is Fulani. That’s his politically correct way of saying it.”
The Southeast region is the predominantly Christian area of Biafra, which attempted to gain independence from Nigeria in the late 1960s.
“Divisions of the Nigerian Army looked the other way as herdsmen massacred defenseless residents in Enugu; They Are Now Partisan – Intersociety”, Sahara Reporters, December 1, 2022:
The human rights organization, the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) has criticized the Nigerian Army for its “partisanship and military rudeness” that are worsening insecurity in the south-east region…
The group stated this in a statement on Thursday, signed by its top officials: Emeka Umeagbalasi, Obianuju Igboeli and Chidinma Udegbunam.
The human rights organization claimed that the southeast region is under security siege with no local content, adding that more than 90 percent of the security personnel were from the northern region.
“It is also sad and deeply regrettable that the Nigerian Army, once secularized and cherished, but now ethnoreligiously sectioned and radicalized, is the main perpetrator of state actor coercive terrorism in the South East region….
Citing the invasion of several communities in Enugu State with so many people killed and more than 14 villages looted by armed Fulani herdsmen, Intersociety said that the military, especially the soldiers and senior officers of the Nigerian Army under the 82nd Division in Enugu, including Cross Rivers State and the 6th Division at Port Harcourt, including the Igbo parts of Delta State, under the 63rd Brigade had conspicuously looked the other way….
The statement read in part: “The Nigerian military has been brutally fractured and bastardized since July 2015. This is to the extent that it now bears the egregiously conductive attributes of the failed Libyan and Somali militaries. Instead of providing public and citizen security and protection in the East, especially in the Southeast in accordance with its constitutional responsibilities and limitations, the Army has turned the Region into an extermination camp and a jihadist war zone.
“The Nigerian army and other security personnel deployed and their commanders in the East, particularly in the South East, have been shadow chasing and observing militarily protected jihadists in the eastern forests, bush, farmland and major road networks. and its diversions, killing more than 300 and kidnapping 400. since January 2022.
“To date, there are no records anywhere in Army crime statistics (if any), showing a single jihadist Fulani herdsman or a number of jihadist Fulani herdsmen or other jihadists having been arrested and prosecuted or “shot for shots” for massacring defenseless citizens of the southeast since January 2022, if not since 2016.
“A typical example was a recent account by a survivor of the jihadist herdsmen’s kidnapping who chillingly revealed how he, along with three other abductees, were kidnapped on October 20, 2022 at Abia State University, Uturu in Abia State. and forced by their jihadist. Kidnappers of Fulani herdsmen walked for eight days through bush trails in Abia, Anambra, Enugu and Igbo, part of the Delta states, during which they saw corpses of kidnapped Igbo-Christians as they covered the four states.
“The blood of the eight defenseless citizens killed by the Nigerian military (army and navy) in Isuofia and Umuona in Aguata, Anambra State is still on their heads….