How Security Forces’ “cow humanization” Code Led to Massive Christian Deaths in Nigeria

The over 100,000 unarmed and defenceless killed in the period of 100 months represent average yearly deaths outside the law of 12,500. This also means that an average of 1,050 extra-judicial killings were carried out per month and 35 unlawful deaths every day. 

According to Intersociety, the “indirect deaths” included those that died from torture and gunshot injuries or those abducted and “made to disappear”.

Still, others died from starvation during captivity. Included in this category are victims of the Jihadist Fulani herdsmen and Jihadist Fulani bandits’ massacre or terror. 

The human rights group finds it shocking that about 70 percent of the direct deaths, tortured, abducted and victims “forced to disappear” belonged to members of Nigeria’s South-East, the South-South and the Old Middle-Belt regions that are mainly inhabited by Christians and non-Muslims.

Inhabitants of these regions were reportedly shot and killed outside the law under false labelling and class criminalization.

Others were abducted from their homes or job places, or on their way home or to work or to social outings and tortured or starved to death, Intersociety reports, adding that other victims of police brutalities in Nigeria “permanently disappeared or secretly held outside the provisions of the written laws without fair and evidence-base trial.”

Apart from those killed outside the law, tens of thousands of other Nigerians were deadly tortured and secretly held without fair and evidence-base trial and several thousands of others permanently disappeared during custodial abductions and incarcerations, Intersociety says.

The report dubbed “Rivers of Blood and Tears Ceaselessly Flowing in Nigeria” highlights, in 2015 alone, numerous major unlawful security operations in the West African nation, starting with an August 2015 massacre of 40 defenceless citizens during peaceful protests in Onitsha, Enugu, Yenagoa, Uyo, Port Harcourt and Asaba regions of Nigeria.

It also highlights other numerous incidents in 2016, including a given starvation to death of 240 civilian detainees including 29 children with ages between newborn and five years at Giwa Army Barracks in Maiduguri, Borno State.

It also lists a certain military bombing on 7 January 2017 of 236 internally displaced Christian IDPs in Borno State.

In more recent incidents of extra-judicial killings, Intersociety highlights the involvement of Nigerian military and other armed State and non-State actors in the unlawful killing of over 7,000 unarmed and defenceless non-Muslim citizens between January 2021 and November 2023 in Igbo dominated States of Delta, Rivers, Anambra, Enugu, Imo, Abia and Ebonyi.

In these places, Intersociety says over 3,200 civilian houses and tens of thousands of other properties including market stores, trucks of goods and automobiles, were burned or wantonly destroyed.

A detailed account of the police brutalities, as reported by Intersociety can be read here.

In the report, the Intersociety team that is led by Emeka Umeagbalasi, a Catholic criminologist and human rights researcher concludes that the Nigerian security forces are “neutrality and professionalism challenged” against non-Muslims, having “brutally been radicalized, biased and bastardized particularly since July 2015.”

According to the researchers, Nigerian security forces are “inches away from being converted to full blown ‘Tribo-Islamic Gendarmes.’”

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Intersociety recommends the structures of the Nigerian security forces be “urgently” restructured to stop the “radicalization”.

“The security forces must be urgently restructured and their personnel and bosses comprehensively retrained and de-radicalized,” the team of researchers at Intersociety suggest.

They add, “The ‘Fulanization’ factor in the security forces must be frontally addressed including weeding out all the reportedly clandestinely conscripted ethno-religious killer elements in the security forces during the disastrous years of the Government of Retired Major Gen Muhammad Buhari.”

“The Nigerian State must also drop and discard the infamous ‘State Jihadism Project’ and take the country back to its supposedly secular status,” the Catholic-inspired researchers say.

They continue, “We are making bold to say that the security forces of Nigeria will never make any meaningful progress in the areas of the country’s territorial and citizens’ security and safety as long as the Nigerian Government continues to beat about the bush and rigmarole in securitization absurdities, frivolities and irrelevancies.”

The researchers find it regrettable that about 85 percent of Nigeria's security personnel and bosses are still “starkly illiterate” in ICT security and intelligence.

The agencies also manifest “gross deficiencies” in mental security and intelligence skills, Intersociety says, adding that the officers are not capable of addressing security challenges that stem from corruption since some of them have been engaged in corrupt practices.