The federal government has described a report published by Reuters, an international news organization, accusing the Nigerian military of infanticide as fake news.
This is just as the news agency published a new report on Monday accusing the Nigerian military of carrying out a massacre of children during the ongoing war on terror.
Reuters, in the first report published last Wednesday, accused the military of running a secret abortion program on female victims of terrorists, adding that no fewer than 10,000 pregnancies had been terminated since at least 2013.
Following the Reuters investigation, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the Nigerian authorities to investigate the allegations against the service.
However, speaking at an event meant to showcase the scorecard of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation under the current regime in Abuja on Monday, Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed accused Reuters of making such an accusation without a part. of evidence
He said: “The news agency made this grave accusation without a shred of evidence, citing only anonymous sources and the reported review of ghost ‘documents’. The agency claimed that their investigation was based on interviews with 33 women and girls, interviews with 33 women and girls to arrive at the false claim of 10,000 abortions! And in a further indication that the cited abortion figure was arbitrary or possibly fabricated, the agency first pegged the figure at 12,000 before settling on 10,000.
“The Federal Government hereby categorically affirms that there is no ‘secret, systematic, illegal abortion program’ run by our military in the Northeast or anywhere in the country. We also reject the accusation of running an abortion program against our military. We categorically state that this story is a terrifying example of fake news and misinformation combined. Writers deserve an award in fiction writing.”
The minister described the report as a ploy to demoralize and distract the military, as well as to cut off the support the country was receiving in the fight against terrorism.
“Is it a strategy to turn the world against Nigeria and cut off the support that is critical to crushing the terrorists? Only the news agency can answer these questions. But we stand by our armed forces, which have served meritoriously in national and regional and global peacekeeping operations from 1960 to date,” he added.
Meanwhile, in another report published by Reuters on Monday, the organization accused the Nigerian Army of carrying out a massacre of children during the ongoing war on terror.
The organization said the report was based on revelations from more than 40 soldiers and civilians who claimed to have witnessed children being killed by the Nigerian military or seen the bodies of children after a military operation.
According to the report, estimates of children killed by the military were in the thousands, adding that it investigated six of the incidents in which at least 60 died.
In the report, one of the victims claimed that her children were killed because they belonged to terrorists.
The report said: “The previously unreported massacre is just one case where the Nigerian military and allied security forces have massacred children during their grueling 13-year war against Islamist extremists in the northeast of the country, a Reuters investigation found.
“Government-employed soldiers and armed guards told Reuters they were repeatedly ordered by army commanders to ‘eliminate’ the children because the children were suspected of collaborating with militants from Boko Haram or its Islamic State branch or having inherited the contaminated blood of insurgent parents. .
“More than 40 sources said they saw the Nigerian army attack and kill children or saw the dead bodies of children after a military operation. These sources included parents and other civilian witnesses, as well as soldiers who said they had participated in dozens of military operations in which children were massacred.