Amnesty accuses security agencies of enforced disappearances in south-east Nigeria

Amnesty International Nigeria has accused Nigerian security agencies of failing to account for the whereabouts of many residents who were arrested in the South-east.

In a series of posts on its X handle on Monday, Amnesty said the arrested victims were often accused of being members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

IPOB is a group agitating for the independent state of Biafra, which it wants carved out from the South-east and some parts of south-south Nigeria.

“In South-east Nigeria, many people were arrested by state agents, without any trace of their whereabouts, and the state denies knowledge of where they are, putting their families through endless anguish,” the right group said.

The victims

Amnesty said Sunday Nwafor, a 47-year-old entrepreneur, has not been seen since 27 February 2020 after his arrest by soldiers from 14 Brigade Ohafia, Abia State.

Amnesty International

The group said aside from Mr Nwafor, many young men detained at a facility of the now disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in Awkuzu, Anambra State, have “disappeared.”

“Nothing was heard about their whereabouts,” it said of the young men at the SARS facility.

Amnesty did not provide the identities of the young men whom it said “disappeared” at the facility of the disbanded SARS.

The right group said another victim, Chijioke Iloanya, 20, has not been seen since his arrest by Nigerian security forces in November 2012.

The group uploaded on the microblogging platform details of other victims of the alleged forced disappearance.

It said Maduabuchi Obinwa, 22, “disappeared after his abduction” on 24 April 2022 when security agents from the Awkuzu State Criminal Investigation Department raided his house in Ekwulobia, Anambra State.

It also said security operatives took Sunday Ifedi and Calista Ifedi, a couple, from their home in Enugu, on 23 November 2021 for allegedly being IPOB members.

The group, however, did not mention the security agency responsible for their arrest.

“The fates and whereabouts of all these people remained unknown at the end of the year,” the group said.

Amnesty also recalled that Obiora Agbasimalo, a governorship candidate of the Labour Party, was abducted by gunmen on 18 September 2021 while going to an election campaign rally in Azia Town in the state.

Mr Obiora, like other victims, has not been released for nearly three years.

Army, police speak

When contacted on Tuesday, the police spokesperson in Anambra State, Tochukwu Ikenga, said he was constrained to speak on matters relating to SARS.

Mt Ikenga, a superintendent of police, however, referred PREMIUM TIMES to a panel of enquiry set up by the Anambra State Government to look into the cases of alleged brutality and harassment by SARS operatives.

When reached for comments on Tuesday, the Chairperson of Civil Society Organisations in Anambra State and a member of the panel, Chris Asor, told PREMIUM TIMES that he would need to look into records to give details of such cases against SARS operatives.

He said the case of Mr Obinwa and several similar cases were reported to the panel at the time.

Mr Asor, however, expressed disappointment that the Anambra State Government was yet to implement the recommendations of the panel on SARS.

He said the government might have abandoned the recommendations given that it later set up a Truth and Justice Committee to carry out similar assignments.

“We submitted the recommendations to the current governor, Charles Soludo, and he promised to implement some recommendations, but nothing has been done yet,” he said.

Innocent Omale, the spokesperson of the 14 Brigade of the Nigerian army in Ohafia, Abia State, did not respond to calls and text messages seeking his comments.

Arbitrary arrest, extrajudicial killings

Amnesty has repeatedly accused Nigerian security forces of carrying out extrajudicial killings in the South-east under the guise of fighting IPOB and other Pro-Biafra groups.

In 2016, the group accused the Nigerian Army of extrajudicial killing of at least 17 unarmed pro-Biafra supporters in Nigeria’s south-east.

READ ALSO: Police teams reportedly shoot each other after mistaking themselves for IPOB members

The allegation supported PREMIUM TIMES’ investigation which documented the killing of many unarmed Nigerians by the army in Onitsha and other areas of the South-east within that year.

Also in 2022, PREMIUM TIMES found that many unarmed residents in the South-east were killed by Nigerian troops deployed to check Biafra agitation.

Earlier in the same year, this newspaper had detailed how innocent residents of the region were killed by security agencies fighting suspected IPOB members.