The Presidency on Thursday refuted the report released by the Amnesty International alleging that the Nigerian army raped thousands of women and girls who escaped from Boko Haram insurgents.
It stated that the rape report is inherently battling with credibility and falling vehemently short of evidential narration. Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, made this position known in a statement in Abuja.
According to Shehu, the report is short on credibility because it does not contain factual leads that could have laid the foundation for investigative actions. He noted that findings were attributed to people but proper description of such people constituting the source of information was not provided.
“Engagement was claimed to have been made with Nigerian authorities but which authority is it, is not provided with clarity. This then is just a wild goose chase report, in essence. “In some breath, the report seemed like the one in 2015, and the one in 2016, and the one after that year, the same things being recycled again and again.
“It ignores the fact of the existing mechanisms put in place by the military, as a self-correcting step and the high-level committee constituted by the Presidency to examine any such claims,’’ he further noted.
Shehu observed that over this period of time, the Nigerian military had indeed established cases of abuse and punishments meted out from Orderly Room trials and Court Martials that resulted in losses of rank, dismissals, and trials and convictions by civil courts.
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