The Defenceย Headquarters (DHQ) is jolted by a publicationย it called โdemonic journalismโ, expressing rage over an allegation that, since 2013, Nigeriaโs military had run a secret, systematic and illegal abortion programme in the North-East terminating at least 12,000 pregnancies among women and girls.
The DHQ declared that the military had never contemplated such evil of running a systematic and illegal abortion programme anywhere and anytime, and surely not on the Nigeriaย soil.
โThe Nigerian military will not also deliberately plan to target children during its counterinsurgency operations or other operations, both within and outside Nigeria,โ it stated.
Director Defence Information, Major General Jimmy Akpor, made this known in a statement while responding to Reuters series about purported actions of the Nigerian military during the governmentโs 13-year-war against Islamist insurgents in the North-East.
While dismissing the allegation, Akpor said โthis new vocation of Reuters to discredit the Nigerian military and institutions is worse than illegal arms trade, worse than hard-drug trafficking, and actually worse than terrorism put together.โ
According to him, the โsupposed stories were purported to focus on two specific areas: First, supposed military-run programme of forced abortions performed on women and girls who were held captive and impregnated by Islamist militants and, second, a supposed killing of children by the military as part of counterinsurgency operationsโ.
He went on: โThe Reuters report was to also allege that, since 2013, Nigeriaโs military had run a secret, systematic and illegal abortion programme in the countryโs North East terminating at least 12,000 pregnancies among women and girls.
โThat many children, were shot, poisoned, suffocated or run down by vehicles in army-led actions. Furthermore, the report was to allege that soldiers selected babies and toddlers for killing after rescuing them and their mothers from Islamist militants, amongst other weighty concocted allegations.
โThe key motive for supposedly carrying out the abortions was allegedly the notion that the children of Islamist militants, because of the blood in their veins, would one day follow in their fatherโs footsteps and take up arm against the Nigerian Government and society.
โThe fictitious series of stories actually constitute a body of insults on the Nigerian peoples and culture for, no people or culture in Nigeria practices such evil as dreamt up by the Reuters team. Irrespective of the security challenges we face as a nation, Nigerian peoples and cultures still cherish life.
โHence, Nigerian military personnel have been raised, bred and further trained to protect lives, even at their own risk especially, when it concerns the lives of children, women and the elderly.
โThis much is reflected in Standing Operating Procedures (SOPs), Concepts of Operations, Rules of Engagements (ROEs) and other documents that guide military operations.
โHence, nowhere has the Nigerian military operated (Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, [Darfur] Sudan, Gambia and Guinea Bissau, amongst others) that, there has been any trace or allegation of infanticide.
โThe Nigerian military will not therefore, contemplate such evil of running a systematic and illegal abortion programme anywhere and anytime, and surely not on our own soil.
โThe Nigerian military will not also deliberately plan to target children during its counterinsurgency operations or other operations, both within and outside Nigeria.
โThe Reuters team must have been schooled in, and have now become proponents of scorched-earth and inhuman policies employed by colonialists during the colonial era and during the battles for independence in Indo-China, Malaysia, Algeria and other places.
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Source; https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/12/book-haram-allegation-of-12000-pregnancies-terminated-in-n-east-jolts-military
