Missing the Baga point

MANY discussions about the killings in Baga, Borno State totally miss the point. The contentions are more about the number of people killed, rather than wondering if soldiers complied with rules of engagements for such operations.

Initial figures of 185 people caused enough outrage. Senator Maina Ma’aji Lawan, who represents Borno North Senatorial District, where Baga, a fishing settlement on the shores of Lake Chad is, said his visit revealed 228 fresh graves, 4,000 houses destroyed.

Government figures are less than 35 people killed. Nigeria doubtlessly has to protect itself from terrorists, within the law.

The indisputable facts are that a joint military operation of Nigeria, Niger and Chad took place in Baga. People died, properties were destroyed. The details are in dispute. The central explanation is that security agencies took the fight against terrorists to Baga, 200 kilometres outside Maiduguri.

“I visited the four grave sites before arriving at the number of residents killed in Baga. At Wayah graveyard, I counted 130 fresh graves, while at the Arewa Cemetery, 60 people were buried by relations. The Magumeri graveyard had 60 fresh graves,” Lawan explained his figures. The military insists its enquiries did not reveal mass graves in Baga.

None of the presentations is conclusive. Fresh graves do not conclusively prove bodies are buried in them. The military’s claim that it did not find mass graves does not mean there is none. The truth lies somewhere.

Government’s lax attitudes to massacres and genocides have endured through the years. Odi, in Bayelsa State, was reduced to rubbles in November 1999 as soldiers bombarded the place after 12 policemen were killed. When former Senate President Chuba Okadigbo visited Odi he said, “I am shocked.  There is nothing to say, as there is nobody to speak with.”  Zaki Biam in Benue State followed two years later.

In his widely published valedictory, Major Paul Okutimo, who led the Internal Task Force on Security in Ogoniland, in 1994 boasted to journalists that he was a specialist trained in over 200 ways of elimination.

His Ogoni account: “We surround the town at night. The machine gun with 500 rounds will open up. When four or five like that open up and then we are throwing grenades, what do you think people are going to do? And we have already put roadblock on the main road; we drive the people into the bush with nothing except pants and wrappers they are using that night.”

He, like others at Umuchem, where protesting youth were killed in 1990, has not been made to account. Security agencies operate above the law. Until they become accountable, Baga would be another footnote in a long list of abuses.