Gen. Lucky ‘Leo’ Irabor, Nigeria Army Theatre Commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, northeast zone, speaks to our reporter on how Boko Haram detainees are treated
WE’VE had some organisations with interest in human rights issues make allegations against the military. Those allegations are so untrue; untrue because they are mere allusions. They did not in any way come to us for verification. They didn’t confront us with the issues before they went to the press. When you talk about human rights abuses in a detention facility, the question to ask is: what are those human rights abuses? The detainees themselves know and speak to the fact that the treatment we give to them in the detention facilities is the kind of treatment they never envisaged. They never thought that they would be well fed or that there will be a kind of medical treatment for them.
There is the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), we give them unfettered access to the detention facility. Well of course, you could say there is congestion. Again, congestion in my view is also relative. Once you are in a solitary confinement; of course, there will be issues. In our state-run prisons, there are issues. It cannot be the same as living in your own house.
We are a professional force. We set out for our operations guided by rules. We do not set out to make life unbearable for anyone. Not even in the frontlines let alone in the detention facilities. In fact, if we had it in mind to make life unbearable for them, why didn’t we eliminate them at the point of capture? That we didn’t do that, speaks to the fact that we are bound by laws that govern operations generally: the international humanitarian law and the international human rights law. And of course our code of conduct and rules of engagement compels us to do what is right.
We have those who come to monitor all that we do, within the military. The idea is to ensure that we do what is right.
Allegations of child abuse
Some have also accused us of keeping children but the only set of children we have are the children of some of the detainees that refuse to let us transfer the children to appropriate facilities for children, like the facility set up by the Borno State government for such children. The others are those children that have also taken part in war. Some of them…a boy of 10, 12, 13, if you know what they have done in terms of killing and what they’ve gone through by way of training and operation of weapons, you will be shocked.
But of course, it will be improper of us to see such a boy of such age and say he is a child and let him go. No. We have to keep him to change his orientation. And our de-radicalisation process of course have yielded results.
In sum, I will say that the allegations that a good number of people and some international organisations, especially the Amnesty International (AI), have levelled against us are untrue and very unfair with respect to the operations and the detention of some of the detainees. What is on ground is very different from the picture they paint.
We also have the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that has engaged us in respect of similar issues and they have not in any way faulted what’ve done. The ICRC, like I said, has engaged us at various times and they have commended us in respect of those issues concerning how we treat those in our detention facilities.
There is no system that is perfect. We are always open for engagement, particularly with those with interests that are positive in orientation, not with those who believe that nothing good can come out of the Nigerian military.
De-radicalising Boko Haram
It’s been quite challenging no doubt but of course, it’s been very successful thus far; because we have brought our ingenuity into the operations. We have been able to evolve and answer the necessary questions: What is it that has motivated them to stay so long in this fight? And what is it that if we take out, it could make them surrender?
The aggregate of all these is that we have evolved a progressive approach to dealing with arrested members of Boko Haram. When they come to our detention facilities…not only do we address their medical needs, at the point we receive them, some of them appear so emaciated. They appear to have been starved of food. They appear very sick. Not only do we address those immediate needs, we also go as far as ensuring that their immediate hygiene requirements are met. Then we provide them clothing and change the rags in which they arrive.
Then we have evolved a humane process of interrogating them. It laid the foundation for properly interrogating them. And a large percentage of them have begun to open up and have a different impression as to the falsehood they were fed with whilst in the bush. They confessed to us that what they were made to believe in the bush is that as soon as they come out, we would kill them but surprisingly to them, we are keeping them alive. We also treat them humanely and even provide them medicines and food.
We allow the ICRC to visit our detention facilities from time to time because of their pedigree. And then they also talk to the inmates. Then they talk to us and highlight areas they would like us to address. In following visits, they try to ascertain if we have addressed issues they raised in their previous visits; and to a fair extent, they see that we do and they have commended us for the progressive improvements in the treatment of the inmates and the facility itself.
Due to our humane interrogation approach and de-radicalisation programme, the inmates have been coming forward with very useful information which has helped a great deal in our operations.
Those in the bush are finally getting to know that they stand to benefit a great deal if they surrender peacefully or come to us. They know that we have in our custody, a great number of them that surrendered and those that we also arrested.
A great deal of reformation has taken place in the lives of some of them to the extent that, they have volunteered to speak to their colleagues that are still in the bush with Boko Haram. They are eager to counsel their colleagues to lay down arms and surrender using themselves as examples. They want them to see that reality is different from what they have been made to believe by their captors and colleagues in the bush.
The onset of change
As the de-radicalisation process progresses, sometimes, you are forced to wonder, are these the same fellows that were responsible for the kind of carnage attributed to them? Many of them have become so remorseful. If not for their confessions about the kind of killings they’ve perpetrated, sometimes, it may become very difficult for you to believe that they were responsible for such crimes. But of course, there are a few others that are still in the process of coming to terms with their situation. And a few others, because of the trauma they experienced while with the Boko Haram terrorist group, sometimes, they experience some emotional breakdown. Sometimes, we have had to take them to appropriate medical facility to ensure that their state of mind is normalised and they get necessary help.
Those in our custody undergoing reform are eager to save their colleagues. Many of them crave that their colleagues lay down arms and come to the kind of understanding they have attained in our custody, which is, the government means well, the military means well and that they are being well taken care of in their detention facilities.
We give them to opportunity to say their Salat prayers and conduct their normal worship at appropriate times right in the detention facilities. The scope of the de-radicalisation programme has since been widened to include renowned Islamic scholars to disabuse their minds of wrong ideologies and introduce them to the right doctrine. These clerics and scholars are working to put them through the right doctrinal framework in terms of the true teachings of the Islam and the Holy Quran.
As it stands today, I can say that, those in our detention facilities, a greater percentage of them has actually come to terms with their situation and they have found that they had been deceived. They feel so remorseful and they wish that they were never part of the Boko Haram terrorism madness. This is heartwarming and that is why we are living no stone unturned to encourage others, those that are still running from one part of the bush to the other, to lay down their arms and embrace peace.
We also hope that those that have been de-radicalised and reformed will prove useful in helping others to embrace peace and reintegrate into society when the process is completed.
