By Faith Udo
Nigerian military killed 35 civilians in vicious air raids in villages last month, Amnesty International has said.
The Human Rights Organisation has lambasted the cruelty of the Nigerian army who used jets to indiscriminately bomb houses and target civilians who were trying to hide in five villages, theeyeofmedia.com has heard
The military claim it was targeting “hideouts of miscreants” in the villages, adding that it had a positive effect in tackling community violence. However, in a country divided by tribalism and economic hardship, killings have become all too common among different factions
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“Launching air raids is not a legitimate law enforcement method by anyone’s standard,” Amnesty’s Osai Ojigho told reporters as he condemned the brutality of the Nigerian military. “Such reckless use of deadly force is unlawful, outrageous and lays bare the Nigerian military’s shocking disregard for the lives of those it supposedly exists to protect.”
A farmer from the village of Shafaron said a helicopter and a jet launched their air raid just after the herdsmen arrived. “The helicopter and the jet started releasing bombs,” he said. “Houses started burning. Children started running for their lives. Mothers packed up their children and escaped with them. We men were unable to fight back and we started running too. This jet burnt our houses and properties to ashes.”
A traditional ruler of one of the villages, whose house was destroyed in the air raid, also described how the aircraft arrived shortly after the herdsmen. He said: “As we were trying to hide we saw a helicopter and a jet arrive and start shooting and bombing houses. When they saw somebody trying to hide, the jet would just blast them with bombs.”
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Multiple Nigerian states have passed legislation banning the open grazing of cattle in order to stop the clashes resulting from pastoralists’ animals trampling agriculturalists’ crops.
The new law came into force in Benue state was necessary because of thousands of Benue indigenes who have been killed and it was almost becoming a pogrom.”
The federal government has not approved of these laws. Last week, Nigeria’s defense minister Mansur Dan Ali said that a major reason for the clashes was that traditional grazing routes no longer existed.
“If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen?” he asked. “It is just like one going to block the shoreline, does that make sense to you? These are the remote causes of the crisis. But the immediate cause is the grazing law.”
“These people are Nigerians and we must learn to live together,” he added. “Communities and other people must learn how to accept foreigners within their enclave.”
Last week the Department for State Security claimed to have uncovered a network of Islamic State militants in Benue and other Nigerian states, explaining that they were also behind the recent killings
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