THE Chief Of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa on Friday debunked claims that the military was involved in forceful abortions of babies fathered by Boko Haram insurgents in Northern Nigeria.
A Reuters report in February 2022 stated that the military ran a secret abortion programme in its fight against armed groups in the northeast, adding that the military abortion programme involved terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls.
However, General Musa, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today monitored by News Point Nigeria, slammed the allegations, indicating that they were machinations of NGOs who don’t wish Nigeria well.
”I wish you could call them now and ask that question. I was the theatre commander when they brought this accusation, and I felt very bad because I noticed most of these organisations don’t mean well for us,” the CDS said.
”Whenever we are making progress and succeeding, they throw this at us to look bad and demoralise our troops and the question is, what is the intent? Are they not happy we are succeeding?
”When that incident came in, I met the then Chief of Staff( Lucky Irabor). These guys have been doing this and we are quiet. Let us investigate because I am dead sure that nothing like this happened”
According to the CDS, the special panel instituted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the military. adding that a public apology was necessary.
”The Human Rights Commission set up an independent committee, and I was the first to testify in January 2023, It took them one and a half years to thoroughly investigate and we gave them unfettered access to anywhere they wanted to go to on their own they finished and brought out their report.”
”We have gone ahead and appealed to the Attorney General to take this to court since they maligned us falsely. Let them come and publicly apologise and say they were wrong about it,” he said.
”The unintended cause is that if you accuse us of doing that, we have been working with international organisations. local NGOs, the UN, are you saying we have been doing this for 10 years and yet they did not report? are you also indicting them? They refused to appear when the report was released.
He also claimed that there were certain NGOs involved in safe abortions for over 10,000 Nigerians, which could have been a likeable source for the report put out by the news outlet.
