The Nation Newspaper

Tag: AI

  • IBM, firm deploy AI, blockchain in agric digital wallet

    Scientists from IBM Research and start-up Hello Tractor are piloting an agriculture digital wallet and decision-making tool, which provides demand and supply visibility for farmers, tractor fleet providers and banks to give farmers the equipment and technology they need to build a sustainable farm.

    In sub-Sahara Africa, more than 60 per cent of farms are powered by humans, with less than 20 per cent provided by engines, a model that is not sustainable as food demand increases due to population growth, which is averaging 11 million per year.

    In addition, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimated that between 35 and 50 per cent are recorded for post-harvest losses in perishable agricultural products yearly in the region due to poor planting practices.

    To address this, in 2014 Hello Tractor launched a mobile platform to enable farmers access tractor services on demand. Using a mobile app, the service aggregates tractor service requests (e.g., ploughing) and then pairs them with recommended tractors and operators, while simultaneously tracking how many hours each piece of equipment is in the field and area serviced.

    Speaking on the initiative, CEO and Founder, Hello Tractor, Jehiel Oliver, said through valued relationships with companies like John Deere, the firm has been very successful in increasing mechanisation access in small holder communities. “To reach the next level, we need to add additional services, including predictive fleet utilisation and maintenance; operator and tractor scoring; financing and the crop yield forecasting,” he said.

    To achieve this, Hello Tractor turned to IBM’s research lab in Nairobi, Kenya. Scientists at the lab are working with Hello Tractor’s developers to apply several technologies, including the Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture, Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud, to bring new services to the app for tractor owners and dealers, farmers and banks. The new services will be tested in a pilot, starting in the first half of next year.

    For farmers, machine learning will help to predict crop yields, which combined with advanced analytics and the blockchain, can be mined to develop a credit score for loans. Forecasted weather data from the Weather Company, an IBM business; remote sensing data (e.g., satellite); and IoT data from tractors will also be incorporated into the app to help small holder farmers know when to cultivate, the quality of their farm cultivation, what to plant, and the appropriate fertiliser, using remoting sensing and IoT data. In the future, the IBM AgroPad technology, developed at IBM’s lab in Brazil, could also be incorporated to determine soil quality.

  • AI as obstacle to Nigeria’s war on terrorism

    Before the Iraqi War of 1991 there was a report of Iraqi soldiers ‘throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators’. That story was a fabrication of no other than Amnesty International, an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that says it is “campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all”. Amnesty International’s star witness in that sordid saga, ‘Nurse Nayirah’, who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US at the time. Nayirah’s testimony before the US Congress was instrumental to the authorization of the Gulf War, the precursor to the hell that the modern-day Iraq is.
    Amnesty International issued a correction to distance itself from Nayirah only after the damage has been done, when the first Gulf War was over there was no evidence to back up the testimony of its star witness. The war and its chain reactions, which are still ongoing, has however provided AI with raison d’etre, it exists to profit from war, helping willing hostile nations start war and blaming the victims (targeted countries) for the hell unleashed on them.
    The trail runs longer and farther afield than Iraq. The whole of the Middle East is practically on fire and the fingers of Amnesty International shows through the gloves in all instances. The NGO has honed its skills to a point where its template is easily adapted to destabilize any nation of its choosing. It sets up a local franchise in the targeted country, recruits citizens of that country who who are unable to resist the allure of comparatively large pay checks and set a foreign slave master to direct them on how to destroy their own country under the guise of defending human rights and the cookies crumble from thence. Yemen, Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt and other countries in that axis are just a few of the places where its goods are delivering destruction as intended.
    There is however a limit to how long and how far a fire would burn once it has consumed the incendiary materials available to it. The Middle East, whose peoples have erroneously walked their legitimate struggles into the Amnesty International trap, is in most part a waste land; its population have in some cases been completely uprooted while in some areas there is nothing left to destroy. Amnesty International is therefore compelled to source a new set for the horror show it is addicted to – the new location must have viable economies, resources and large population whose death and displacement would be tear jerking enough to present Amnesty International as a messianic organization that is committed to eradicating human suffering while its sponsors pillage the resources of the doomed nation.
    Unfortunately, Nigeria happened to fit the bill as it met all the criteria for the kind of nations that Amnesty International select for destabilization; the country has great economic potential, abundant resources and a large population. Tragically, Nigeria also has a population that are awake to demanding for their rights, which is an added bonus for Amnesty International as it is exploiting this to actively recruit Nigerians free of charge to destroy their own fatherland without realizing that they risk becoming refugee. (This of course does not include the compromised Nigerians on AI’s staff as these ones have been confused by the relatively higher pay).
    Now that Amnesty International is all but done in the Middle East it is increasingly turning its attention to Nigeria. The groundwork of lies it has been building in the past one decade are now being activated for what may yet be its greatest onslaught, one that would define whether Nigeria descends into the Middle East kind of chaos or emerge to keep waffling along, depending on what the citizens decide as being in their own best interest.
    As is the case everywhere else that Amnesty International has ever sold its lies, the target has been the Federal Government of Nigeria even though the NGO’s attack is through the Nigerian Army, which has the constitutional role to prevent what Amnesty Internatinal wants to happen to the country, render it into a failed nation-state – a no man’s land where its corporate clients can come to exploit raw materials without having to pay prevailing global rates to a legitimate government. If allowed, this questionable organization will present the Nigerian Army as a criminal outfit that is not deserving of international support and one whose leadership should be punished for daring to defeat the terrorists that were commissioned to take the nation apart.
    These apparent intentions perhaps explain why the achievements of the Nigerian Army or military in defeating terrorists – Boko Haram, IMN, IPoB separatists, militants and other criminals while operating within global best practice of human rights observance is never acknowledged. Rather, the NGO engages dozens of Nayirahs, male and female, faceless witnesses and victims, whose testimonies cannot be trusted to accuse the military of atrocities that exist only in movie scripts written by Amnesty International staff. The organization, of course, usually ignore how these criminal elements maim and kill security personnel and innocent Nigerians because that does not fit its agenda.
    The success of the Nigerian Army in degrading Boko Haram terrorists and other security threats to Nigeria has made Amnesty International’s work difficult in Nigeria. Troops are endeared to citizens who never stop singing the praises of their country’s military for keeping them safe. This makes rubbish of the manufactured stories that AI peddles as reports and brings it under increased pressure to deliver to those that have paid it to manage Nigeria into chaos.
    The NGO has recently resorted to another of its tricks, which is to outsource its lies to other international NGOs to increase the prospect of Nigerians believing such and the international community acting on them. The open support for Boko Haram by these lies easily give the agenda away and the NGOs that have been so contracted are easily outed as liars, which means they will beat a retreat faster than Amnesty International.
    Notwithstanding that the Nigerian Army has been able to ride above the muck laid out for it by Amnesty international and its allies, it must be noted that the organization’s unrelenting sabotage of the efforts to root out Boko Haram and other terrorists is a drain on the country. Its support has made Boko Haram persist longer than it is capable of without outside help. It is for this reason that Nigerians must hold Amnesty International responsible for whatever they have suffered in the hands of Boko Haram as long as it lasted. This would be a first step to Nigerians mentally preparing themselves to deal with Amnesty International the way country that enjoy stability dealt with the NGO and that is to give it no space to operate as an agent of instability.

    Ocholi is a Peace and Conflict Resolution Expert based in Abuja.
    [adahocholi@outlook.com]

  • AI and one-shoe-fits-all advocacy

    AI and one-shoe-fits-all advocacy

    If you ever lived through military rule, of the most venal, destructive and irresponsible hue as Nigerians did, you’d cherish Amnesty International (AI).

    But with the return to the democratic order, you’re often amazed at the naivety, at worst, or ideological fixation, at best, of AI reports, even with the old military dictatorship’s negative impact on the present undemocratic “democratic” players themselves.

    That about captures the Nigerian Defence Headquarters, DHQ’s angst, with the latest AI report (2017-2018) on the Nigerian military, on its security duties, response to terrorism and allied matters, and even the vexed issue of gays and lesbians, in spite of extant Nigerian law.

    A crucial preliminary point: both AI and the Nigerian DHQ are each fixated with their terms of engagement.

    AI’s focus is to let off as many as possible, on the maxim of “human rights” (read amnesty), perhaps with the injunction that it’s better to free nine guilty persons, than to punish, in error, one innocent person.

    On the contrary, DHQ appears to operate from the strict code of crime and punishment — and for good reasons, when its security duties are related to terrorism.

    There is always an ethical question, to which perhaps no one has given an adequate answer: must a terrorist that killed and maimed hundred of innocent citizens enjoy the same “human rights”, as his victims, that perished for no cause?

    AI, fixated with “amnesty” — and from the tenor of its reports — would say yes.  But the military, which routinely loses some of its members to this lunatic fringe, would thunder the contrary.

    In other words, while AI always sees a bottle perpetually half-empty, the military, with its vision coloured by the gore of the frontline, sees the same bottle as half-full.

    Each needs to act as check on the other.  The DHQ needs AI’s constant stricture to moderate the excesses of some of its own ranks, in torture and brutality, when dealing with captured “terrorists”.

    But AI itself must know that inasmuch as its terror “victims” in military captivity have rights under the law, innocent citizens that the terrorists “victimized” too do have rights!

    So, in its one-shoe-fits-all strategy, AI cannot lionize killers but demonize those the state put in charge to curb their menace.

    Inasmuch as everyone should get justice, mounting special “human rights” for Boko Haram criminals, who at will abridge the most vital right of other citizens — the right to life — sounds rather hollow, even if AI is duty-bound to point out other military operational excesses.

    Which brings Hardball to cases of gays and lesbians.  A liberal attitude would posit these are private decadence that have nothing to do with anyone, if not made public.  That is the philosophy AI follows, though latterly encoded as “fundamental human rights” in Washington DC and most other western capitals.

    But the last time Hardball checked, Nigerian law has taken sides with its religious lobby, which frowned at those decadence as “crimes” that must be sanctioned.

    So, under what ambit is AI charging the Nigerian military for denying gay and lesbian rights — American or Nigerian law?

    This is international charity as its most dangerous, morphing from a legal watch dog into cultural and legal imperialism.

    Until Nigeria alters its laws on the matter, AI has absolutely no basis to push such charges, except it accepts that it’s contemptuous of Nigerian law — and that would be tantamount to arrogant outlawry.

  • Human Rights Abuses: Amnesty International has exposed itself as a liar, says NGO.

    The New Initiative for Credible Leadership, NICREL has described the Amnesty International as a blatant liar following its various responses on issues that involves human rights abuses in the country.

    NICreL Executive Director, Steven Onwu who spoke with newsmen today Abuja said as a group, it will continue to applaud the efforts of the Nigerian military aimed at placing the interests of humanity above other considerations.

    Onwu said the group has been following proceedings of the Presidential Investigation Panel to Review Compliance of The Armed Forces with Human Rights Obligations and Rules of Engagement given the crucial role that the exercise would play in deepening full observance and compliance with human rights requirement.

    He said, “the dedication with which we have followed the proceedings was informed by our understanding and acknowledgement that the issue of human rights in conflict situations is multifaceted.

    “The trend prior to the sitting of this panel has been for the focus to be on the rights of the aggressors who despite (possibly) committing heinous crimes have international organizations and their domestic branches canvassing the rights of groups and persons that engage in acts of terror, kidnapping, intimidation, extortion and other forms of harm to the civilian population and attacks on military and security personnel deployed to counter them.

    “Nowhere in the rendering are the rights of the victims – local populations and the security operatives that are killed – get mentioned.

    “NICreL has had course in the past to question the intentions of these fifth columnists pretending to be human rights monitoring organizations.

    “Our concerns at those times stemmed from the impact that their lies have on international support for counter-terrorism war in Nigeria and the negative pull the have on morale of soldiers that are sacrificing even their lives to keep the rest of the citizens safe.

    “A front liner among these fifth columnists is Amnesty International (AI), which most recently centered its existence on Nigeria. It ran a campaign of attrition against the Nigerian military and even took the unprecedented step of awarding media contracts to defend its reports, which have been found out to be nothing but a pack of orchestrated lies aimed at damaging the fighting capacity of Nigerian soldiers.

    “While NICreL had always been confident that its summations on AI captured the exact state of, the sitting of the Presidential Investigation Panel to Review Compliance of The Armed Forces with Human Rights Obligations and Rules of Engagement has finally exposed the international organization for what it is, a massive scam that was contrived to undermine countries like Nigeria. This is despite the fact that AI had always boasted about sending soldiers and their commanding officers to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

    “It was therefore surreal that the same Amnesty International had its fifteen minutes of fame before the Presidential Panel but fortunately left no one in doubts that all it had ever done in the past was misleading the entire world. AI’s representatives before the panel had expect the usual practice where they are able to get away with lying with Power Point presentations that are produced from doctored pictures and videos; but the panel in this instance expressed the need for concrete evidence. This was evidence that Amnesty International is short of as it could not even point to the physical locations of the mass graves for which it had earlier claimed to have coordinates and satellite imaging.

    “Amnesty International’s poor performance at the panel where, it agreed to appear for the first time, to defend its numerous allegations against the Nigerian military is condemnable and completely irresponsible. It is one thing to have insistently aver that AI was lying but it is totally gutting as there is no justification for an organization that claims international pedigree to lie without remorse on this scale.
    NICrel can confidently, on the strength of the presentations made before the panel, which it monitored, declare that Amnesty International lied against the Nigerian authorities in all its previous reports and statements as the military have continued to monitor and discipline their own officers and personnel where the leadership gets any report of infractions.

    “We believe the military leadership under the current dispensation should be rather applauded by Amnesty International on the strength of the information at their disposal which is at sharp variance with the misleading reports they have repeatedly published but are now unable to prove before the panel. If AI is truly doing the right thing and fully appreciate the precarious situation that the country has been faced with in recent times, it will toe the path of honor and acknowledge the role played by the military from the proper perspective.

    “As a group that monitored the proceedings at the Presidential Investigation Panel to Review Compliance of The Armed Forces with Human Rights Obligations and Rules of Engagement, from one location to the other, NICreL is confident that Nigerians will see reasons to further appreciate the military leadership and their efforts when the panel eventually makes its report known to members of the public and submitted to President Muhammadu Buhari for action.

    “We salute the sustained evolution of the military as an institution that has continually placed the interest of humanity above every other consideration and its successes in the last two years, which we appeal should be sustained.

    “Finally, we call on patriotic Nigerians to institute legal actions against Amnesty International at the ICC to account for several Nigerians whose existence were cut short as a result of AI’s perverted intervention in Nigeria. Its client that it always defend have snuffed life out of too many innocent citizens for Nigerians to remain indiferent”he said

  • Knocks as Amnesty International fails to prove human rights abuses before Presidential Panel

    Human rights monitoring organization, Amnesty International, AI, came under fire as it testified before the Presidential Investigation Panel to Review Compliance of The Armed Forces with Human Rights Obligations and Rules of Engagement, after it emerged that it tried proving its earlier reports with manipulated videos and pictures before the panel.

    Amnesty International, led by Professor Ernest Ojukwu, SAN, appeared before the panel to demonstrate and prove to the panel human rights abuses which it had earlier published and circulated widely before Nigerians and members of the international community in an attempt to stop the military from fighting terrorism.

    The Nigerian Army team led by Professor Yemi George, SAN who cross-examined  Amnesty International’s researchers  at the tribunal on their methodology, said the entire report lacks any iota of credibility to be published in the first instance, if not for selfish motives.

    It was therefore a case of helplessness  for Amnesty International throughout the session as experts who appeared before the panel seem not to have either prepared the report or part of the investigation that produced the video and pictures being used by the organization against the military.‎

    The ongoing public sitting  briefly descended into exchange of heated words between members of the panel and the Amnesty International (AI) representatives.

    The brief rancour started when a member of the panel, Olawale Fapohunda asked the representatives of AI if they are aware that having access to restricted documents they copiously referred to in their report is an illegal act.

    To this, AI’s Senior Director for Research, Dr. Anna Neistat,  replied that if the panel is accusing the organization of committing any crime, the organization would like its corporate lawyer to be present.

    “If you insist AI should answer this question, it would be provided in writing after consulting with our organisation’s lawyer,” she added.

    Fapohunda earlier asked if in the over 55 years existence of AI, if there is any occasion where it was discovered that facts contained in their publications were found to be incorrect.

    “Yes, there are cases of minor errors discovered and in all these cases, they have been immediately corrected and rightly communicated. But none of these errors have ever affected any of the allegations we raised. We have extreme rigorous process before publishing our reports,” Neistat answered.

    However, when another member of the panel, Maj. Gen. Patrick Akem (Rtd) said he found it shocking that AI did not visit Maiduguri before publishing its report “Stars on their shoulder, blood on their hands”; counsel representing AI, Prof. Ernest Ojukwu (SAN) replied that the panel is already “telling us your result without any conclusion. You are already shocked and it sounds conclusive.”

    At this point, the Chairman of the panel, Sir Justice Biobele A. Georgewill intervened, assuring that although it is expected that there would be little altercation in such hearings, no single panel member will have a final say.

    “Please, ignore these exchanges, just let the panel conclude its investigation,” he said.

    The Chairman however asked AI how it expects the panel to go about investigating the allegations when AI did not provide specifics or present eye-witnesses.

    “Groups like us document our allegations to form a prima facie case for government to investigate. Our role is not to implicate any individual,” AI’s Director of Research and Advocacy for Africa, Netsanet Belay said.‎

    In an incident that further underscores Amnesty International’s growing loss of credibility in Nigeria and other parts of the world, the Save Humanity Advocacy Centre (SHAC) said it would be forced to kick the international NGO out of Nigeria if the Federal Government fails to expel it for its many atrocities against the country.

    SHAC said it takes particular exception to reports by Amnesty International like  “Blood on Their Hands,” and other reports aimed at undermining the ability of Nigerian military and security agencies to respond to security threats and protect citizens. It disclosed it would mobilize Nigerians to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to reject the NGO’s position while ensuring that Amnesty International is compelled to pay the necessary compensation for the damages done to the image of the country.

    The video, pictures and submissions were earlier discredited by the Nigerian human rights and humanitarian organization, SHAC, which paraded nine International experts on human rights and conflict resolution.
    SHAC’s team included Ambassador Lumumba D’Aping, a one-time Sudanese Ambassador to the United Nations, David Falt, Founder of Preventive Diplomacy in Geneva, Mary Johnson, a practicing human rights lawyer in the United States and United Kingdom. It also has a lawyer, Edward Omaga , Professor Shuaibu Danfulani of the University of Abuja and Dr. Ifure Ataifure of the Centre for International Strategic Studies, Abuja.
    The local NGO which submitted 3 memos on the Nigerian State’s  response to threats to humanity had monitored proceedings of the panel since its inauguration including a visit to the north east, south east and south-south geo-political zones of the country  where its experts assessed the threats being faced by the people of Nigeria.
    Lead Counsel to SHAC, Edward Omaga esq whilst speaking to pressmen after the sitting said Amnesty International should apologize to the Nigerian people for the various unsubstantiated allegations it published as reports in online and electronic media even before approaching the panel and the International Criminal Court (ICC) without a single proof to back up its claim.

    He warned that “failure by Amnesty International to do this within 14 days will force SHAC to institute an action against them at the International Criminal Court same way they did against the Nigerian authorities as their motive has clearly been exposed by their poor outings before this panel in Nigeria.

    “AI has constituted itself into a court where the same party acts as a judge, a victim and a defendant in its own case. This must not be tolerated any further anywhere close to Nigeria soil and the attempts to discredit the Federal Government in protecting its citizens has surely failed,” he stated.
    Omaga also said “Nigerians will not forgive Amnesty International for trying to twist the successes of the anti-terrorism campaigns against those whose blood was used as sacrifices for us to have the current peace and tranquility in the country.”
    He called on genuine NGOs and international partners to support Nigeria in addressing the humanitarian issues in the north east and other parts of Nigeria and not to add to the woes of the people in any way.

  • Probe of military violation of rights: AI says no to death penalty

    Probe of military violation of rights: AI says no to death penalty

    The Amnesty International (AI) yesterday hailed the setting up of a Judicial Commission to review compliance of armed forces with human rights obligations and rules of engagement but said it would not accept the death penalty for culprits.

    It asked the federal government to ensure that the commission is independent, impartial and free from any conflict of interest.

    The AI made its position known in a statement by its Director, Amnesty International Nigeria, Osai Ojigho in reaction to the inauguration of the commission on Friday by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.

    The organization described the setting up of the  judicial commission as “long overdue and an opportunity to finally bring justice to victims of war crimes and other serious human rights violations committed across parts of Nigeria affected by conflict.”

    It asked government to ensure that “victims of human rights violations are allowed to present evidence to the commission without fear and with all the necessary protection.”

    The AI urged the federal government to ensure that the commission is independent, impartial and free from any conflict of interest.

    It added: “We also call on the government to ensure that the commission is independent, impartial and free from any conflict of interest that may affect the integrity of its work. Ensuring that the commission has the resources to carry out its work and making its terms of reference public can bring transparency.”

    “Investigating compliance of security agencies with rules of engagements in all conflicts, and violation of international humanitarian and human rights law is a step in the right direction that must be carried out with all sense of responsibility of making sure that no human rights violation goes unaccounted for.

    “The mandate of the commission to advise on preventing violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in conflict situations is also a vital step for the country.”

    But the AI opposed death penalty for those who might be found guilty of the violation of rights in the Armed Forces and other security agencies.

    “The government’s priority should be justice, human rights and the dignity of human life in Nigeria.

    “All persons reasonably suspected of committing crimes under international law and other serious violations of human rights on all sides of all conflicts in the country must be brought to justice in fair trials before civilian courts without recourse to the death penalty,” it said.

    The seven-man Judicial Commission is tasked with reviewing compliance of the Armed Forces with human rights obligations and rules of engagement especially in local conflict and insurgency situations.

    It is headed by Justice Biobele A. Georgewill of the Court of Appeal.

    It is also empowered to review extant rules of engagement applicable in the military and extent of compliance thereto.

    It will investigate alleged acts of violation of international humanitarian and human rights law under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), Geneva Conventions Act, African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act and other relevant laws by Nigerian security agencies.

    The Commission is similarly mandated to investigate factors that might be militating against a speedy resolution to local conflicts and insurgencies and advise on means of preventing violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in conflict situations.

    Its other members are: Major-General Patrick Akem; Mr. Wale Fapohunda; Mrs. Hauwa Ibrahim;

    Mr. Jibrin Ibrahim – member; Mrs. Ifeoma Nwakama; and a representative of the Office of the National Security Adviser.

    The Commission is expected to commence work immediately and submit its report within 90 days.

    Its establishment is coming on the heels of allegations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that soldiers have been maltreating people, including suspected members of the terror sect Boko Haram, in the insurgency in the northeast.

  • Understanding AI, TI Conspiracy against multicultural, multiethnic Nigeria  

    A common thread runs through the world empires that rose to their prime and later collapsed, military decline. Not taken in isolation and not a sole factor, military decline or a gradual degradation and subsequent destruction of the military of these civilizations spelt their doom. In modern times foreign powers that are interested in destroying a targeted country simply set out about destroying its army and the collapse of other vital institutions and the country becomes a matter of domino effect.
    This process have been perfected to an extent that the population of the targeted country, who are most likely to suffer, are the deceived into applauding the destruction of their country. This is because the destruction of their military, contrary to being cataclysmic, is usually subtle; and where one would expect hostile entities driving the process, seemingly innocuous entities drive the process of destroying armies – hiding their destructive agenda behind the façade of being responsible international organizations.
    Nigeria has been under sustained attack, which it has remarkably weathered well. But there is a limit to which the resilience can last, which makes it crucial that citizens are enlightened to understand what their country is going through and how they should not be brainwashed into becoming facilitators for the destruction of their country with a concept that is locked on “destroy the military and the country is gone” principle.
    At the forefront of the war on Nigeria’s corporate integrity and future is Amnesty International (AI). On paper and on the storefront, AI is that respectable organization that polices the adherence to human rights of the world’s citizens. It mounts pressure on governments and corporate organizations to overhaul or reform their approach to human rights issues especially in the areas of free expression, incarceration, conduct during war and other crises. It has been at the forefront of the discontinuation of the death sentence even if the convict were a murderer; to AI death sentence is nothing short of state sanctioned murder.
    Given the unfettered access it has to the corporate media, the treatment its frequent scathing reports against certain countries get is the dream of every PR practitioner, AI is able to launder its image in a way that has left large swathes of the earth’s population swearing by its name each time they perceived they have been wronged or their rights trampled upon.
    Yet it is not all as it seems. Amnesty International has its ugly side. Its reports have proven to be more  subjective than objective and is influenced more by what fate has been decided for a country or its leader than by the genuine desire to improve on the quality of freedoms its citizens enjoy. In implementing this kind of brief, particularly in the middle, AI has been known to look away when its favoured side is involved in committing the atrocities. By the way, the atrocities are in most cases the product of its interference in the affairs of the countries that are in crisis.
    Often times Amnesty International issues slew of reports demonizing the country, its leader and army with the goal of securing forceful intervention from coalition countries. Once it gets the coalition countries the excuse they have been waiting for to invade a sovereign country it reverts to carrying on as if that country never existed. Libya is a testament to this modus operandi. The travesty is that the process of sacking the supposed leader who is killing his citizens often kill more of those same citizens; the aftermath of the misplaced interventions kill even more.
    In Nigeria, Amnesty International, possibly in reaction to client feedback, modified its approach. Its strategy, from the much that have been seen, is to continually issue reports aimed at forcing the army into a position where it is constrained in its operation against Boko Haram terrorists it is fighting in the northeast of the country. Each time the military make gains in the counter-terrorism operation AI issues reports that amount to threats and blackmail of human rights abuses charges against the troops, which leaves them demoralized and allowed Boko Haram fighters to recover and launch more deadly attacks.
    The same strategy applied to other insurgents and separatists that Nigeria’s security agencies are containing in the southeast and destructive militants in the south-south. There have been instances when it went to the extreme of harassing the Nigerian state on behalf of looters of the public tills that are in incarceration.
    Some Nigerians finally woke up to the reality of Amnesty International’s subversive activities in Nigeria, after finally realizing that the nation’s military was not lying in its previous refutals of that organization’s several reports of human rights violation. The citizens were taken by surprise when Amnesty international fought back when they demanded it leaves Nigeria in view of its activities. That episode seemed to have forced the human rights campaigning organization into hasty retreat even though it did not boot it out of Nigeria like protesters wanted.
    AI’s clients simply dusted up and introduced another respectable looking organization, Transparency International into the project against the military in Nigeria. The anti-corruption organization wasted no time in delivering a report that promptly accuse  accused the army of being rotten beyond measure even though the incidents upon which it based that conclusion have been overtaken by events. The military services of 2017 were accused of shady deals transacted two decades ago.
    The accusation, it turned out, was a preface . The real chorus to the chant to destroy Nigeria came as Transparency International whipped out the collective hymnal, more like a manual, and repeated demands that Amnesty International once made to immediate past US President, Barack Obama. The crux of the matter is to prevent the military in Nigeria from buying arms. It became a matter of finding just any excuse to keep the army away from fighting terrorists: human rights abuse, repression, corruption and they will likely at some point accuse the Nigerian Army as not being gender balance just so there will be something to justify why Islamic State affiliated terrorists will get weapons and the Nigerian Army could not get same.
    The foregoing may appear as something that calls for concern, which is rightly so. The greatest concern comes when one realizes that Amnesty International and Transparency International will soon be exploiting Nigeria’s multi-cultural and multi-ethnic configuration, according to details that were leaked from their collaboration. It is a phase of the assault on Nigeria that the two group’s operatives in Nigeria have promised their handlers would not fail to unravel the country. The argument is that their international credentials would make Nigerians easily believe any manipulated stories they are fed by either of the entities. Implementation of the agenda has reached an advanced stage as seen in the issuance of the military corruption report, on which Transparency International collaborated with Amnesty International’s staffers.
    The only thing left to stop this wrecking train is for Nigerians to abandon difference along religious and ethnic lines since it is the next stop on the route that Amnesty and Transparency International have chose to make Nigeria implode by first rendering its military inefficient​.

    Ainoko, a peace and conflict resolution expert writes from Barnawa, Kaduna.‎

  • Damning report

    Damning report

    •The Fed Govt should investigate Amnesty’s alleged human rights abuses by the military 

    The report by an international human rights organisation, Amnesty International (AI), indicting the Joint Military Task Force and its civilian collaborators who are fighting the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria can be adjudged a nightmare. This is because the insurgents are made up of such horrendous murderers, that it will sound ridiculous to an average person, to ascribe any form of respect for their human rights. Yet, regardless of our common indignation against the criminal elements, the protocols of the Geneva Convention on War Criminals cover them (insurgents). So, instead of a sweeping denial of the allegations, the Nigerian military command, and indeed the Federal Government should investigate the video report and react appropriately.

    We agree that the level of cruelty exhibited in the video can only be ascribed to a criminal organisation, instead of the national army of a respected member of the international community, such as Nigeria. Yet it will be playing the ostrich to pretend that the Nigerian Army, just like we have seen in other countries, is incapable of having within its ranks roguish elements, who can descend to such bestiality. Indeed, if such group exists in the Nigerian Army, it is in the country’s interest that the members are routed and brought to justice, to save the greater image of the national army. So, the way to go is to set up an independent enquiry to sift through the evidence provided by the group.

    Importantly, we appreciate the difficulty faced by our military personnel, in fighting a group that lays no claim to any form of respect for the international rules of military engagement. This is a group that relishes mass murder and the greatest acts of bestiality, as its form of military chivalry; but for which the international community in their common wisdom contends should not be subjected to the same measure as they give. We subscribe to that wisdom; otherwise it will be difficult to sift conventional armies from roguish armies of international criminal gangs such as the Boko Haram. That is the burden of doing the right thing, as against being an outlaw.

    We hope the human rights group also took into cognisance the fact that the Boko Haram elements have conducted their bestiality wearing the uniforms and camouflages of the Nigerian Army. As such, we hope they thoroughly conducted their enquiries before releasing that damning report. We also appreciate that with modern technology, images can be superimposed and fictions represented as visual facts, to mislead the public. Before coming to their conclusion that it was the Joint Task Force of the Nigerian army that was shown in the video, we hope AI took steps to eliminate these margins of error.

    After discountenancing these scenarios, the Nigerian Army, as we stated earlier, must use this crisis of confidence as a test case of the fidelity of its officers and men. Such enquiry will not derogate from the fact that they are engaged in the patriotic responsibility of confronting perhaps the greatest threat to the corporate existence of Nigeria since the end of the civil war. There is no gainsaying that their responsibility is onerous and very dangerous.

    Despite that, they must not allow in their ranks those who share similar traits with the insurgents they have forsworn to defeat. This regrettable allegation against our military is also one more reason why their involvement in policing operations must be curtailed. Prior to the Osun State election, Nigerians were appalled as hooded armed persons wearing military uniforms, intimidating freely in the state. Such conducts raise fears about the integrity of any national army.