ABUJA, Aug. 14 (AGCNewsNet) – Nigeria’s persistent failure to curb violence in the country’s South-East has created a “free-for-all reign of impunity” in which state and non-state actors have committed serious abuses and killed at least 1,844 people between January 2021 and June 2023, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

In a new report titled A Decade of Impunity: Attacks and Unlawful Killings in Southeast Nigeria, the rights group documented killings, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and mass displacement carried out by armed groups, state-backed militias, vigilantes, criminal gangs and cults from January 2021 to December 2024.

“The Nigerian authorities’ brutal clampdown on pro-Biafra protests from August 2015 plunged the South-East region into an endless cycle of bloodshed,” said Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s Nigeria director. “The government must stop turning a blind eye to the unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests, detention, torture, enforced disappearances, and destruction of properties in the South-East region.”

The report, based on 100 interviews with survivors, victims’ families, civil society members and traditional and religious leaders, draws on field research in Imo, Delta, Anambra and Enugu states between April and November 2023.

According to Amnesty, gunmen killed more than 400 people in Imo state between January 2019 and December 2021, raiding communities, police stations and vigilante offices. The attackers also extorted residents during social events, punishing non-compliance with arson or killings.

Authorities have blamed the pro-Biafra Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), for much of the violence. IPOB and ESN deny links to the so-called “unknown gunmen.”

However, Amnesty said IPOB/ESN’s enforcement of a “sit-at-home” order issued in August 2021 has itself caused abuses, with people beaten or killed for defying it, schools and markets shuttered, and local economies crippled.

The report accused the state-backed Ebube Agu paramilitary force, created by South-East governors in April 2021, of arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and destruction of homes.

It also said Nigerian security agencies, including the army and police, committed unlawful killings and property destruction during military operations in the region.

“No one knows exactly the number of people killed in the South-East since August 2015,” Sanusi said. “Impunity for these human rights crimes continues to have a chilling effect on the enjoyment of other human rights.”

Amnesty called on authorities to conduct “prompt, thorough, independent, impartial, transparent and effective” investigations into all alleged abuses and to ensure justice for victims regardless of perpetrators’ affiliations.

The report builds on Amnesty’s previous research published in November 2016, which detailed a violent crackdown on pro-Biafra activists. According to the rights group, findings were shared with South-East state governors and Nigerian security agencies, but no responses were received.

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