Relations and speakers at an Amnesty International Dialogue in Maiduguri, Borno State, have urged the Nigerian military to account for innocent persons missing or arrested as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast.
Over the last 13 years, especially between 2012 and 2017, the military, during the war against Boko Haram, allegedly made indiscriminate and rampant arrests of suspected insurgents across communities in the affected states.
While the majority of the people arrested were detained at Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri, thousands were detained at facilities in Lagos, Kainji in Niger State, and other locations across the country.
The insurgents reportedly raided the Giwa Barracks and Bauchi Prisons to free their detained members.
The families, however, complained of missing fathers, husbands, wives, children, and siblings as a result of alleged rampant arrests by the military over the last 13 years.
Although the government and the military would not release any record of such persons, the global human rights watchdog and a Maiduguri-based NGO, Allamin Foundation for Peace, agreed that over 23,000, while the International Committee for the Red Cross fixed their number at 20,000.
