The Borno State Commissioner for Women Affairs, Hajiya Zuwaira Gambo, has raised concern over the high rate of pregnancy and procreation in Boko Haram victims’ rehabilitation camps in the state.
The commissioner, who disclosed this before the Special Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations in Counter-Insurgency Operations in the North East (SIIP North-East), said some women usually get pregnant four months after deliveries.
She recalled how a man had his four wives put to bed on the same day, leaving the ministry to make the necessary interventions and ensure their welfare.
Zuwaira noted that such pregnancies consequently diminish the ability of such women to properly breastfeed two babies whose age gap is negligible.
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The panel, chaired by Justice Abdu Aboki, a retired High Court Judge, with the mandate to investigate Reuters report alleging forced abortion on over 10,000 pregnant women by the Nigerian military, asked the commissioner whether such abortion was conducted.
“Reuters’ report came to me as a surprise; the ministry or any of its agencies has not recorded any case of abortion or massacre of children as alleged by Reuters and women and children in the said camps are given the basic care and support by the state government,” she said.
On the possibility of the military or any person administering drugs like oxytocin to abort pregnancies of women and girls in the rehabilitation camps, she said it was not true, saying, “Soldiers are not allowed in these camps apart from guarding the entrance and the perimeter of the camps.”
“The women are emotionally attached to their husbands and the allegation that soldiers or other public servants could abort pregnancies of their beloved wives is unimaginable,” the commissioner said.
Asked by the panel Secretary, Mr Hilary Ogbonna, if these rehabilitation camps have witnessed casualties resulting from secret abortions that the authorities are not aware of, she answered in the negative, adding that some casualties involving children in the camps are usually as a result of early childhood diseases like measles and diarrhea.
The panel, set up by the National Human Rights Commission, began an independent investigation into the matter last Sunday with a hearing that runs throughout the week.
In December last year, the Reuters news agency published a report which disclosed that the Nigerian military had operated a secretive and illegal abortion programme, terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls since 2013.
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