Nigeria: Security Personnel Impregnating Teenage Girls

A young girl abandoned with a baby

For the first time ever, the Nigerian government has formally  accused the Nigerian armed forces of sexual perversion that targets innocent teenage girls. 

The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution which is under the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs disclosed this on Saturday 11^th January. 

Speaking at a gathering in Ogun state, the director of the committee, Mr Akambe Moses, said members of the armed forces stationed at border towns were culpable in the impregnation of several teenage girls from host communities. 

He however did not state if these were rapes or consensual relationships. No security outfit has commented on the disclosure yet. 

Nigerian Army personnel

In October 2016, Human Rights Watch reported that civilian vigilantes, IDP camp coordinators, policemen and soldiers were raping displaced women and girls in the crises raged parts of the  country. 

In early 2017, AFP interview three teenage girls who confessed to have been impregnated by soldiers who promised to take care of them. The soldiers were redeployed and they haven’t set eyes on them ever since. They were all Muslim girls.

Years of insurgency in the north east of Nigeria has made poverty an epidemic in the region forcing survivors to turn to illicit means for continuous survival.

At the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency in the Jonathan administration, there were widespread allegations of rapes against soldiers posted to the north east, there were also confirmed extrajudicial killings by the armed forces. 

It was the hope of northerners that the APC-led administration of Muhammadu Buhari will investigate, prosecute and punish the culprits, they waited in forlorn hope.