The military has dismissed an alleged systematic and illegal abortion programme in the North Eastern part of the country.
The director of Defence Information, Defence Headquarters (DHQ), Major General Jimmy Akpor, while reacting to a letter from Reuters requesting information on series of stories focusing on a supposed military-run programme of forced abortions performed on women and girls who were held captive and impregnated by Islamist militants and a supposed killing of children by the military as part of counterinsurgency operations, said; “The Reuters report was to also allege that since 2013, Nigeria’s military had run a secret abortion programme in the North East terminating at least 12,000 pregnancies among women and girls. That, many children were shot, poisoned, suffocated or run down by vehicles in army-led actions.
“That soldiers selected babies and toddlers for killing after rescuing them and their mothers from Islamist militants, among other weighty concocted allegations.
“The key motive for supposedly carrying out the abortions was allegedly the notion that the children of Islamist militants, because of the blood in their veins, would one day follow in their father’s footsteps and take up arm against the Nigerian government and society”.
He said the Nigerian military personnel had been raised, bred and further trained to protect lives, even at their own risk especially, when it concerns the lives of children, women and the elderly.
He also said The military high command said 82,064 Boko Haram fighters with members of their families in the last one year surrendered to troops of Op HADIN KAI out of which 16,553 were active male fighters, 24,446 were women while 41,065 were children.
This is in addition to the 13 rescued abducted Chibok girls within the same period with their children both male and female.
“The children were neither aborted nor yanked from their mothers and killed, as may have been the joy of Reuters,” he said.
