Killings of Minor: It’s Not True – Army Chief Denies Allegations In Reuters Report

Lieutenant General Faruk Yahaya, Chief of Army Staff, has called Reuters reports accusing soldiers of killing children in the fight against terrorism in the North-East false.

The army chief refuted a Reuters investigative report last December, which allegedly revealed how the Nigerian military operated a secret programme, terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies of women who had been liberated from Boko Haram terrorists in the region.

During a Special Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations in the Implementation of Counter-Insurgency Operations in the North East (SIIP-North East), Yahaya stated that the Nigerian military is one of the best in the world, with operations guided by rules consistent with fundamental human rights.

The Nigerian army chief, who denied claims that the military aborted over 10,000 babies born to women and girls rescued from Boko Haram insurgents, claimed that Reuters was only “acting a script” to undermine the military’s dominance over the insurgents.

The army chief, who called for a further probe of Reuters, stated that;

The armed forces are professional armed forces guided by rules and regulations under an elected government with the Commander in Chief and institutions that are there, we all know.

Some people think we are on top of trees, and that’s why they are writing what they are writing, sometimes. This army is a professional army, armies’ work is universal, we have gone on courses, and there is nowhere we have gone that we have not performed. If you go to institutions in the world including the US, and the UK, you will see Nigerians there, professionals.

We see nothing good in us, everything good in them. Whatever is done in other places we don’t ask questions, we just say it’s the US, UK.

It would be recalled that a Reuters report of last December revealed that the Nigerian military since 2013 carried out “a secret, systematic and illegal abortion program in the country’s northeast, ending at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls” who were kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants.”