The Commander of Joint Investigation Centre (JIC) of Operation Hadin Kai in Giwa Barracks, Maiduguri, Borno state, LT. Colonel A.U. Ahmed has said that contrary to Reuters’ report, pregnant women rescued by the military from the frontline are supported to deliver their babies safely.
Of the 2,048 detainees at the centre, 35 are women; among them are those who are pregnant at the time they were rescued from the battlefield, and some of them were also rescued with their little children.
The LT Colonel who made this disclosure through his second in command, Captain Olugbenga Adeniyi when the Special Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations in Counter-Insurgency Operations in North East Nigeria (SIIP North East) visited the centre noted that Reuters’ report seeking to indict the military of human rights infractions is unfounded, we won’t have children with their mothers in the facility if pregnancies were terminated.
Testifying before the 7-Member panel chaired by Justice Abdu Aboki (rtd), Captain Adeniyi said that it is ironic for Reuters’ to allege abortions of 10,000 pregnancies, infanticide, and other forms of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) against the military which has successfully conducted several antenatal and postnatal services, citing an example of an infant delivered in the facility only two days ago as at the time of this report. “How can we have all these children here if we terminate pregnancies?”
In the same vein, the Head of Records at the JIC, Lt Sadiq Ahmed Ogoshi testified before the panel saying that the centre has not recorded any death or abortion of pregnancies.
On how the centre manages cases of pregnancy involving women and girls, Ogoshi stated that they have medical personnel including nurses and community health workers who take care of such cases.
According to him, when such women and girls brought into the facility are due for delivery, they are conveyed by the Clinic’s ambulance to the 7 Division Hospitals at Maimalari military cantonment where they are given the required medical care.
Similarly, a nurse at the JIC medical facility, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Hyplapamduwa Wakawa said that she ensures that any drugs administered to patients are recorded in line with standard medical practices.
She also informed the panel that she is not aware that certain drugs like oxytocin were used between 2017 and 2019 to terminate the pregnancies of 30 girls (less than 18 years) so as to stop them from giving birth to children fathered by the Boko Haram insurgents.
Meanwhile, a Member of the investigative panel, Dr. Maisaratu Bakari (Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Modibbo Adam University Teaching Hospital, Yola Adamawa state) has observed the need to ensure that proper and timely immunization programme are carried out in the detention facility so that babies and children who are in the facility are afforded the opportunity to get immunized against various diseases.
