Research Entity Decries Unfairness as Muslims Head Military Posts in Nigeria's Predominantly Christian Regions

“Senior military officers of Northern Muslim extraction have dominated senior postings in the Region, a region with more than 95 percent Christian population and Christianity-affiliated others,” Intersociety researchers say in the statement dated September 28.

According to them, Nigeria has deep-seated “ethno-religious peculiarities” and has been experiencing mounting “deeply ethno-religious divisions.”

The West African country, the researchers say, has also experienced “unfairness, imbalance and near-zero neutrality in security and defense law enforcement operations by the country’s military and police and allied others in the past ten years.”

Calling for balance in the allocation of military posts, they say, “The authorities of the military are strongly called upon to rewind and ensure ethno-religious balancing when posting senior military officers to man their formations in the South-East.”

“This will give South-Easterners a sense of belonging, confidence and trust in matters of security and safety of their lives, liberties and properties, in addition to ensuring their psychological wellbeing and stability,” they add.

More in Africa

South African Catholic Bishop Known for Liturgical Reform at Conference Dies at 76

Read the article

According to Intersociety researchers’ investigations, there are at least four top senior military and police officers from Muslim Northern Nigeria holding forth as top commanders in Imo State alone.

The top military officials include Brigadier Gen Ibrahim Abbas, a Commander in Owerri, Air Commodore D.E. Bello, Commander, Nigerian Air Force 211 Quick Response Group Base, Owerri, Navy Commodore MA Alhassan, Commander, Nigerian Naval Base, Oguta, Imo State, and Mallam Aboki Danjuma, Commissioner of Police, Imo State Command of the Nigeria Police Force.

Meanwhile, the Intersociety researchers have called on the Nigerian Defense Headquarters to go back to how it was before it lost the people’s trust.

They say that before June 2015, the Nigerian military was known for “neutrality, secularity and semi-professionalism”, qualities they say raised its public trust and confidence among citizens of Africa’s most populous nation.

Over the years, the trust that Intersociety researchers estimate was at 45 percent “drastically reduced to less than 20 percent… especially among civilian citizens of the East and members of minority ethnic and religious groupings in the North.”

They point out lack of neutrality among the military authorities, as the situation the researchers say is characterized by “romance with jihadist bandits and their allies in the North.”

The Intersociety researchers decry “negotiations and pacifications” between the military and jihadist bandits, noting that the situation has made it difficult for the Nigerian government and the country’s security forces and their commanders to successfully extricate themselves from involvement in attacks, especially those targeting Christians.

Some of the attacks target Muslims and Traditionalists, Intersociety researchers say, adding that victims are killed in their tens of thousands, millions forced into camps for the displaced persons, and tens of thousands of refugees generated.

“It is shocking and alarming that Nigeria is the only place where terror jihadists under the watch of the military and police are allowed to address world press conference brandishing loaded automatic rifles and other illicit small arms and light weapons without having successfully been disarmed, demobilized, rehabilitated, de-radicalized and transformed into lawful, liberal and tolerant civilian life,” the researchers lament. 

They find it inconceivable that while jihadists are freely brandishing guns in their attacks against vastly Christian populations, Christians on the other hand are not allowed to keep any weapons to defend themselves.

(Story continues below)

“The same military that romances and pacifies jihadist bandits and allied others in the North, is found to have turned around and unleashed the East with maximum force and brutalities including incessant raids and confiscation of ‘self-defense, gaming and hunting weapons’, classified in the country’s written laws such as Firearms Act of 2004 as un-prohibited firearms,” the Intersociety researchers say in the report shared with ACI Africa September 28.

Agnes Aineah is a Kenyan journalist with a background in digital and newspaper reporting. She holds a Master of Arts in Digital Journalism from the Aga Khan University, Graduate School of Media and Communications and a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communications from Kenya's Moi University. Agnes currently serves as a journalist for ACI Africa.