Soldiers disobeying Defence Minister — Rights group raises the alarm

Prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has alerted the newly sworn-in Minister of Defence, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, that some soldiers do not respect his order withdrawing them from mounting roadblocks so as to be deployed purely for counterinsurgency and other internal security operations.

The rights organisation regretted that “whilst the enthusiastic Minister of Defence may have been deceived into believing that his order withdrawing soldiers from roadblocks was obeyed . . . it is unfortunate that in all of South East of Nigeria, it was observed during the Yuletide season that it was business as usual in the hundreds of roadblocks vexatiously set up by soldiers and police bearing arms and ammunitions but who were noticed being busy extorting drivers passing through these roadblocks and constituting severe traffic difficulties for road users.”

HURIWA in a statement issued on Friday and signed by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, recalled that Gen. Musa had said that one of his key strategies for tackling insurgency is to withdraw soldiers from road checkpoints and redeploy them into the bush to directly confront terrorists.

“Contrary to this directive, HURIWA’s teams of researchers noticed significant presence of armed soldiers and police manning the hundreds of checkpoints across South-East of Nigeria which these armed security forces use for extortion of drivers and road users and were not seriously involved in any sort of security activities to protect the population of South East of Nigeria,” the rights group lamented.