International human rights group, Amnesty International (AI), has accused the Nigerian government of allowing a decade of unchecked violence in the South-East, where both state and non-state actors have allegedly carried out widespread killings, disappearances, and abuses with impunity.
The organization’s latest report, A Decade of Impunity: Attacks and Unlawful Killings in South-East Nigeria, was presented in Enugu during a press briefing attended by journalists, lawyers, and civil society leaders.
The group’s director, Isa Sanusi, said Nigerian authorities must “begin addressing the security crisis in the South-East region by carrying out transparent, impartial and effective investigation of killings, assassinations, enforced disappearances and other atrocities committed by state and non-state actors since August 2015.”
Sanusi warned that official inaction had allowed the region to slide into chaos.
“The persistent failure of government to address the security crisis in the country’s South-East region has created a free-for-all reign of impunity in which numerous state and non-state actors have committed serious human rights violations and killed at least 1,844 people between January 2021 and June 2023,” he said.
The report traced the roots of the crisis to the Nigerian government’s heavy-handed response to pro-Biafra protests in 2015, which it said “plunged the South-East region into an endless cycle of bloodshed.”
It documents unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, and enforced disappearances allegedly carried out by gunmen, state-backed paramilitary groups, vigilantes, and criminal gangs.
“Assassinations of prominent personalities and attacks on highways, security personnel and facilities are chilling reminders of the region’s insecurity,” the report added.
At the presentation, victims from Anambra and Imo states shared harrowing accounts of violence.
Amnesty International urged Nigerian authorities to “undertake prompt, thorough, independent, impartial, transparent and effective investigations into all allegations of violations and abuses committed by state and non-state actors in the region,” warning that impunity continues to endanger human rights and deepen insecurity across the South-East.
