Fifteen rights groups with roots in Nigeria’s South-East have expressed outrage over the labeling, on Friday, of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as a terrorist organisation by the Nigerian military. They, in a statement issued on Saturday morning in Onitsha, posed 15 questions for the military to answer.

The statement was signed by the leaderships of International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety) and Southeast Based Coalition of Human Rights Organizations (SBCHROs). Fourteen rights are under the umbrella of SBCHROs. They are Civil Liberties Organization, Southeast Zone (Southeast CLO); Centre for Human Rights & Peace Advocacy (CHRPA); Human Rights Organization of Nigeria (HRON); Global Rights & Development International (GRDI); Society Advocacy Watch Project (SWAP); Anambra Human Rights Forum (ANHRF); Southeast Good Governance Forum (SEGGF); International Solidarity for Peace & Human Rights Initiative (ISPHRI); Igbo Ekunie Initiative (Pan Igbo Rights Advocacy Group); Civil Liberties Organization, Anambra State Branch (Anambra CLO); Foundation for Environmental Rights, Advocacy & Development (FENRAD-Nigeria); Rural Engagement & Development Foundation (RED-Foundation); Society for Economic Rights & Social Justice (SERSj); and Initiative For Ideal Development & Emancipatory Leadership in Nigeria (IDEAL-Nigeria).

The statement reads in part: “Yesterday’s public labeling of the IPOB members world-wide, numbering over three millions (as clearly seen by the number of members of the group in recent street matches in Nigeria and around the globe) and the entire Igbo Race as “militant terrorist organization” by the Nigerian Armed Forces through the Defense Headquarters; is not surprising to our Coalition. It has further exposed chronic racial/tribal hatred against the Igbo Race; by those hiding under the cover of the Nigerian Armed Forces. The above distress message has further thrown open the real motives behind the genocidal operations.

“Why we do not wish to dissipate our advocacy energy delving into the Nigerian Military’s latest hate speech and criminal labeling, it is irresistibly important to leave the Defense Headquarters with the following 15 expertise questions for the purpose of further exposing the embedded soldiering quackery and primitivism, unprofessionalism, corporate illiteracy, ethno-religious bias/zealotry and gun-culture drunkenness; collectively and individually sickening, terminally, members of the Armed Forces of Nigeria especially the Lt Gen Tukur Yusuf Buratai-led Nigerian Army.

“The 15 technical questions are: (1) what is terrorism or offense of terrorist activities and terrorism financing both in Nigeria and UN or regional and international contexts? (2) Who is a terrorist/ who are terrorists by Nigerian code laws’ definition? (3) Circumstantially, manually, numerically, mentally and materially speaking and put together; can an internationally registered not-for-profit organization-IPOB (registered in UK in 2006 under its Companies Act with certificate no 9141882) and recognized by the UN’s ECOSOC as a non armed resistance body campaigning for indigenous rights of its own race be militarily labeled a “militant terrorist group”. (4) By Nigeria’s Terrorism Prevention Act of 2011 (as amended in 2013), especially in its Section 2 (1) (c); does the Nigerian Armed Forces or any of its branches have legal right to declare a non armed resistance and a well known civil/indigenous advocacy group as a terrorist group? (4) When has it become the role of the Nigerian Armed Forces to usurp and take over the function of a Federal High Court Judge?

“Others are: (5) Have the Nigerian Armed Forces/Federal Government abandoned their criminal arraignment of Citizen Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB pending before an Abuja Federal High Court and have they also appealed and quashed the subsisting judgment of the Federal High Court which ruled that “IPOB is not an unlawful society and allegation of its key leaders’ involvement in terrorism has no substantiated evidence” (6) Where are the physical locations of IPOB’s “terrorist arsenals or weapons or armaments” in Nigeria or any part thereof? (7) What are the trends and patterns of IPOB’s terrorist activities in Nigeria or any part therefore; which are rooted in conventional art of terrorist insurgency? (8) What are the statistical records of IPOB’s terrorist casualties and property destructions in Nigeria or any part therefore? (9) Under the Nigeria’s criminal laws and the 1999 Constitution as well as the country’s municipalized regional and international treaties; can a merely suspected criminal intent (mens rea); especially that vengefully defined or tagged by the State constitute a punishable act without corresponding criminal act (actus reus)? (10) In the modern and globally recognized art of insurgency warfare, can a civil group with identifiable membership of over 3million; living in identifiable and clearly defined urban areas and captured in national demographic records (such as the National Register of Voters/Drivers License Data); who are also noted with physical presence in over 80 countries across the world be correctly labeled a “militant terrorist group”.

“The rest are: (11) If IPOB with numerical strength of over 3million people, as a whole, can be seen and labeled by the Defense Headquarters as a “militant terror group”; then why would the former resort to asymmetric warfare or commando militarism instead of engaging in numerically strong formal or symmetric armed resistance? (12) Can China, with world largest land army of 2.3million go into informal soldiering; such as guerrilla, commando, insurgency or terrorism when it has more than enough manpower for its soldiering?

(13) Do members of the Nigerian Armed Forces study modern military science and its theoretical and practical frameworks as well as its forms, patterns and trends? (14) Where on modern earth or part of it has the following features of provoked or charged civil disturbances caused by State coercive terrorism and laying of siege on civilian population/race been labeled “acts of militant terrorism?”. (15) Is it not correct to say that by unleashing military violence of immeasurable proportions, the Nigerian Military has turned themselves into a State terrorism?

“That is to say how can the following constitute before God, Man and Law acts or offenses of “militant terrorism?: (A) “The formation of a Biafra Secret Service (akin to unarmed/paramilitary and bare-handed Man O’ War, Boys Scout, Boys Brigade, Catholic Mobile Security, Red Cross’s Khaki Personnel for Emergency/Humanitarian Services; and FRSC/State traffic personnel, etc). (B) Claimed formation of Biafra National Guard”.

(C) “Unauthorised blocking of public access roads. (D) Extortion of money from innocent civilians at illegal road blocks. (E) Militant possession and use of weapons (stones, molotov cocktails, machetes and broken bottles among others) on a military patrol on 10 September 2017. (F) Physical confrontation of troops by Nnamdi Kanu and other IPOB actors at a check point on 11 September 2017 and also attempts to snatch their rifles and (G) Attack by IPOB members, on a military check point on 12 September 2017, at Isialangwa, where one IPOB actor attempted to snatch a female soldier’s rifle.”