Nigeria: Soldiers open fire at protest, killing 9 women

Nigerian soldiers shot and killed nine women at a protest against the army’s handling of communal clashes in the state of Adamawa, according to AP News.

The women who were protesting on December 8 did so on a major road in Adamawa’s local government, Lamurde, when soldiers began shooting at people after being blocked from passing.

On December 9, witnesses and victims’ relatives told AP news in detail what they witnessed. It was also apparent that ten other people were injured in the attack.

Despite witnesses’ statements, the Nigerian army has denied killing anyone and, instead, blamed the deaths on a local militia who they claimed opened fire on the protestors.

Although the army denies killing civilians, there is too much evidence against them that states otherwise. Amnesty International’s Nigeria office verified that all nine victims were in fact killed by Nigerian soldiers.

The director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, Isa Sanusi, said in a statement, “It shows that the Nigerian military has not changed much because of its past record of human rights violations and disregard for rule of law.”

The Nigerian authorities’ human rights abuses are a regular occurrence. Just in October, the Nigerian police clashed with protesters and fired tear gas at them to stop demonstrations in favour of clearing separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu from terrorist charges.

However it is not only state authorities that pose a threat to public safety. Thousands of civilians have had to flee northeast Nigeria due to militant violence and seek asylum in neighbouring Cameroon.

This is taking place in Borno state, which is a regional area that has been going through 16 years of conflict due to an armed insurgency by Boko Haram, a jihadist militant group which was founded in the early 2000s to establish an Islamic Caliphate.

AP News, Maghrebi.org