She and many other women were taken hostage by Islamist terrorists in the village on the island of Lake Chad, which was besieged by Nigerian forces. Shells detonated. Bullets flew past. Fati passed out in fear as her assailants disappeared.
When asked about the attack that took place in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, several years ago, Fati, now in her early 20s, recalled the morning when she woke up in a military camp nearby, “I felt the happiest I ever had in my life.” She told reporters that she had endured more than a year of being brutally raped, beaten, and forced into marriage with militants. This pregnancy was the result of these abuses. She had now, at long last, been saved. I was so appreciative of the soldiers, she remarked.
She reportedly lay on a mat in a cramped, dark chamber at a military barracks in Maiduguri, the state capital, about a week later. Cockroaches were scuttling over the floor, and it was disgusting. She and five other women received unexplained injections and pills from uniformed guys who entered and exited the room.
Fati, who was about four months pregnant, claimed that after four hours, she had a burning ache in her stomach and black blood began to leak from her. The other women were writhing on the ground and bleeding as well. She reasoned that “the military intends to kill us.”
When she thought back to the shots, she realized that the troops had aborted their pregnancies without their knowledge or consent.
She claimed that after the women flushed the blood down a squat toilet, someone threatened to beat them severely if they shared it with anyone.
According to dozens of witness accounts and documents examined by reporters, the Nigerian Army has operated a covert, organized, and illegal abortion program in the nation’s northeast since at least 2013, terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls, many of whom had been abducted and raped by Islamist militants.
According to the witness accounts, the abortions were typically performed without the person’s consent and frequently even their knowledge. Interviews and records revealed that the pregnant women and girls ranged in age from a few weeks to eight months, with some being as young as 12 years old.
33 women and adolescents who claim to have had abortions while being held by the Nigerian Army were interviewed for this inquiry. Only one claimed that she voluntarily consented. Additionally, journalists spoke with nine security personnel and five civilian healthcare workers who were involved in the scheme, including soldiers and other government workers who were accompanying pregnant women to abortion clinics. In addition, reporters examined copies of military reports and hospital records from the civilian sector that listed or described thousands of abortion procedures.
There hasn’t been any prior information about the abortion program run by the army. The campaign against women who were held in military custody for days or weeks depended on deceit and physical coercion. Three soldiers and a guard claimed that they routinely reassured women, who were frequently weak from imprisonment in the woods, that the drugs and injections they were being given would help them recover their health and combat diseases like malaria. Women who refused were occasionally assaulted, caned, detained at gunpoint, or drugged into submission. According to a guard and a health worker, some people were restrained by ties or pins while having abortion drugs injected into them.
Bintu Ibrahim, now in her late 20s, described how soldiers picked her up along with a group of other women who had fled the insurgents roughly three years ago and gave her two shots without her consent. She realized she and the others had undergone abortions when the blood started to flow and the agonizing pain began. She claimed that the women resisted and asked why until the troops threatened to murder them.
Ibrahim claimed, “If they had left me with the baby, I would have desired it,” and Yagana Bukar, another former prisoner, corroborated her statement.
Some abortions took tragic lives both within military facilities and out in the field. Four soldiers and two security officers reported seeing women die from abortions or seeing their corpses afterward, though it was difficult to fully assess the scope of the deaths that occurred during the program’s nearly ten years of operation.
At the time of her own abortion near a small village in the bush, Ibrahim claimed to have also seen a woman die from an injection; her companion Bukar corroborated this account.
Ibrahim stated, “That woman was almost six or seven months pregnant..” She was sobbing, screaming, and rolling around before finally ceasing to roll and scream. She started to lose her breath after being so traumatized and weak.
“They just dug a hole, covered it with sand, and buried her.”
Neither who founded the abortion program nor who in the military or government oversaw it could be ascertained by reporters
Nigerian military leaders denied the existence of the program and claimed that the reporting was a result of an international campaign to undermine the nation’s efforts to combat insurgents.
Major General Christopher Musa, who oversees the military’s counterterrorism operation in the northeast, said in an interview on November 24 on the abortion program, “Not in Nigeria, not in Nigeria.” “Everyone values life. We value family life. Women and children are respected. We value every individual soul.
Nigeria’s chief of defense staff, General Lucky Irabor, did not reply to requests for comment. The military’s director of defense information issued a five-page statement to reporters on December 2; a week after reporters requested an interview with Irabor and shared extensive findings and questions with his office. The statement was afterward disseminated on Facebook and Twitter. According to the statement, Major General Jimmy Akpor claimed that the report was driven by “wickedness” and a “bullying” mentality.
The fictional collection of tales, according to Akpor, “actually constitutes a body of insults on the Nigerian peoples and culture.” Specifically when it comes to the lives of children, women, and the elderly, Nigerian military personnel have been raised, bred, and further trained to protect lives even at their own risk.
In northeast Nigeria, where a 13-year battle between the federal government and Islamist extremists is raging, women and girls are imprisoned. According to the UN and human rights organizations, at least 300,000 people have perished since the conflict started, some through violence and many more from malnutrition and illness. The northeast, a region of semi-arid savannahs, dense woodland, and floodplains, was formerly referred to as the country’s breadbasket. But as the conflict continued, it descended into widespread hunger and economic ruin, leading to a large-scale exodus and what the UN has dubbed one of the worst humanitarian crises in history.
The idea that the offspring of insurgents are predestined by the blood in their veins to one day take up arms against the Nigerian government and society is central to the abortion program and is shared by much military personnel as well as some civilians in the northeast. The program was required, according to four soldiers and one guard, to eliminate potential insurgent fighters before they were even born.
One of the seven people who admitted to performing abortions on army orders said, “It’s just like sanitizing the society.”
The program, according to four of the health professionals questioned by reporters, was for the benefit of the women and any children they might have who would not have to deal with the stigma of having an insurgent father.
According to reports from soldiers, the army-run abortion program has been in operation at least since 2013 and procedures were still being carried out as of November 2016. Pregnant former insurgent prisoners are routinely taken in trucks under military supervision, sometimes in convoys, to barracks or hospitals across the northeast for abortions, according to the sources who spoke about the intricately planned operation.
Witness accounts and documentation examined by reporters indicate that the procedures have taken place in at least five military installations and five civilian hospitals in the area. Many took place in Maiduguri, which serves as both the government’s command center and the largest city in northeastern Nigeria.
