Presidency questions credibility of Amnesty’s report on rape

The presidency says Amnesty International’s report alleging human rights violation by Nigerian security agencies is inherently battling with credibility, falling vehemently short of evidential narration.

Garba Shehu, senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, made this position known in a statement in Abuja.

Amnesty will on Thursday release the report titled ‘They Betrayed Us: Women who survived Boko Haram subject to violence and abuse in Nigeria’.

According to the presidential aide, the report is short on credibility because it does not contain factual leads that could have laid the foundation for investigative actions.

He noted that findings were attributed to people but proper description of such people constituting the source of information was not provided.

“Engagement was claimed to have been made with Nigerian authorities but which authority is it, is not provided with clarity,” he said.

“This then is just a wild goose chase report, in essence. In some breath, the report seemed like the one in 2015, and the one in 2016, and the one after that year, the same things being recycled again and again.

“It ignores the fact of the existing mechanisms put in place by the military, as a self-correcting step and the high-level committee constituted by the presidency to examine any such claims.”

Shehu observed that over this period of time, the Nigerian military had indeed established cases of abuse and punishments meted out from orderly room trials and court martials that resulted in losses of rank, dismissals, trials and convictions by civil courts.

Some protesters on Wednesday stormed the office of Amnesty International in Abuja, accusing the human rights group of blackmailing the military.

The defence headquarters had also reacted by describing the report as false.