The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, Intersociety, has said that the unwillingness of South East youths to enlist in military and police, was because of the alleged atrocities committed against youths of the region by both the military and police.
Chairman of Intersociety Mr. Emeka Umeagbalasi in a statement on Tuesday, said: “It is deeply regrettable and disappointing that the Nigerian Army has continued to pretend as if the reasons for this are far-fetched and have nothing to do with the Governments of Nigeria, including their Army and Defence Headquarters through hostile policies and discriminatory practices.
“We wish to place it on irrefutable record that the Nigerian Army and the Defence Headquarters are substantially and inescapably responsible.
“It is our general finding that parents and legal guardians in the South-East have lost several thousands of their children, particularly male children of productive age-brackets, aged between 18 and 40, to killings outside the law and unchecked military conduct-atrocities especially those involving extra jus, extra-legal and extrajudicial killings, ‘wanton domicide’, abductions and permanent disappearances and unaccountability of their dead or disappeared body-persons.
“Findings by the victim-parents and legal guardians using close-source and open-source checks indicated that such youths had gone missing in the hands of the drafted security forces, particularly the Nigerian Army and its controlled Defence Headquarters through their combatants and commanders drafted in the South-East.
“The most shocking of it is that apart from most of the open killings traced to the military, cases of abductions and disappearances were also blamed on the Nigerian military authorities by the affected parents and legal guardians and treated as “closed case” and “a no go area”.
“These ‘Atrocity-Policies and Conducts’ were also found to have been heightened and worsened by secret flooding of key military formations in the South-East with senior military officers of Northern Muslim and other non-Eastern extractions who conducted and still conduct their field operations in very despicable, hateful and discriminatory manners-through ethno-religious profiling, false labelling, mass criminalisation, biased intelligence, prosecutorial vindictiveness arising from trump-up charges and want of indictable pieces of evidence, absence of conclusive and intelligent investigations and reckless resort to hearsay conclusions.
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“Intersociety also has documented evidence contained in our several reports, indicating the same patterns and trends involving domination of the military top hierarchies in the South-East by senior Northern Muslim officers and others from outside the region since July 2015 to Dec 2025, with similar situation being the case in police and intelligence establishment hierarchies in the region.
” Available findings also indicated that the affected active South-East population included dozens of “Service-Personnel” from the region especially commissioned officers who served in the military up to 2017 and 2019 were parentally forced to resign to avoid being trapped in Boko Haram insurgency areas through conspiracies and “enemies within” and killed for being Igbo-Christians; during which scores were alleged killed, forcing several others into unceremonious resignations.
“Ongoing Alleged atrocity policies and crimes by Nigerian military: targeted, widespread and coordinated killing and abduction and permanent disappearance of “the Good (85%), the Ugly (10%) and the Bad (5%)” in the South-East under the canopy or cover of “combating IPOB/ESN terrorism and violent crimes in the South-East”.
“While on the other hand, pampering hard-line Islamic jihadists (Boko Haram insurgents) and protecting allied others particularly Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and Jihadist Fulani Bandits in the North through the so called “de-radicalization, repentance and reintegration into the society or absorption into Boko Haram counterinsurgency civilian JTF”.
“Despite the fact that they are responsible for yearly massacring and abducting tens of thousands of defenceless Nigerians-mainly Christians and burning down or wanton destruction of their sacred places of worship and dwelling houses (i.e. recent release of the so called “744 Repentant Boko Haram Islamic insurgents” Umeagbalasi said.
