By Emmanuel Onwubiko
The Nigeria Army is once more in the eye of the storm due to the indiscretions and unprofessional conducts of some of her operatives and officers with regards to internal military operations. Under the current dispensation the Nigerian Army has had several face offs with International humanitarian groups over alleged widespread killings of civilians.
The latest challenge to the public and corporate image of the Nigerian Army is the alleged mass killings of over 150 unarmed protesters thought to be members or sympathizers of the Europe registered group known as the INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF BIAFRA (IPOB).
IPOB has for two years now waged global wide peaceful advocacy campaigns for self-determination of the people of South-East of Nigeria.
The members of the Indigenous People of Biafra are absolutely unarmed and are some of the most peaceful and peaceable advocates of self determination Worldwide.
The British founded global human rights body known as AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL has recently issued damaging but extensively verifiable reports of the killing spree conducted by the Nigerian Army in the South East of Nigeria in the last one year leading to the slaughter through extra-legal means of unarmed civilians belonging or exercising their sympathy for the messages of self-determination being spread peacefully by IPOB.
This report has understandably generated considerable volumes of reactions with the Army hurriedly denying any involvement but in another breath said it was only defending her operatives from violence. Which violence? One may ask.
The killings of civilians by the Army go against everything that constitutional democracy stands for because extra-legal execution of civilians is absolutely antithetical to civility and democracy.
For the better part of the last two decades, Nigeria
Importantly, the attempt to sweep under the carpets these senseless killings captured in audiovisuals and which are watched globally, offends everything that make us rational and thinking beings.
The killings if tolerated would amount to overturning all the efforts we have genuinely made to build a Nigerian nation whereby the Rule of Law would become our national ethos.
