A group, the Concerned Northern Lawyers Forum, has condemned the recent military accidental bombing, killing over a hundred people at Tudun Biri village in the Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State, with a threat to institute legal action against the Federal Government over the incident.
The group said the decision to sue the Federal Government is to demand payment of adequate compensation for the victims of the military drone attack.
Speaking at a news conference in Kaduna on Saturday, a spokesman for the group, Nafi’u Abubakar, countered the Nigerian Army’s claim that the attack was a mistake, insisting that the operation was deliberately planned against the innocent civilians of Tudun Biri community.
He urged the Federal Government to immediately commence a thorough independent investigation into the bombing incident with a view to getting to the root of the matter.
Abubakar also asked the Nigerian Army to reevaluate its rules of engagement and training procedures to prevent the loss of innocent lives during its operations.
Army apologises, rights groups fault incident
Over 100 people were confirmed dead in the strike that occurred on December 3, 2023 while scores were injured in the most recent military mishap coming near one year after an airstrike by Nigerian Air Force from Makurdi killed scores of Fulani Filani people, after the then Benie State Governor Samuel Ortom made them to pay over N29 million to retrieve their seized cows.
It will be recalled that as they were offloading – at their Fulani settlement in Doma Local Government on Nasarawa/Benue bountry – their retrieved cows just brought from Ortom’s leverstock agency, when the military warplane surfaced and massacred them for no justified reason although the military, which did not reason talk afterward, had attempted to claim same victims as terrorists but without success.
Already, the Nigerian Army which committed the latest one in Kaduna has apologised over the strike, reassuring that there would be no recurrence of such an incident but rights groups have condemned it.
Recall also that the Army, like the Air Force in the Nasarawa/Benue incident, first denied the Kaduna killing it called affected only terrorists only to later admit its wrong with military authorities pay visits.
Attempt had been made to, in the admission, use collateral damage but that attempt could not be sustained as questionsvwete raised about targets of the airstrike.
“Before you can use the words collateral damage, you should be able to tell Nigerians about the success you made of the targeted terrorists that brought about your decision to attack in the first place. To say ‘Oh, we were targeting these and these terrorist and along the like we had these unfortunate incide but why that collateral damage sadly happened, we are happy to also announce the success of the killing of the targeted terrorists’. That did not happen, and so, it was a decisive killing, a source said.
According to the rights groups, “The Nigerian military’s recklessness is a result of the authorities’ consistent failure to hold them to account for a long list of such atrocities. These unlawful killings of civilians cannot be swept under the carpet,” said Director of Amnesty International Nigeria, Isa Sanusi.
President Bola Tinubu and Governor Sani have also ordered a probe into the matter which threw the nation into mourning.
