A new report by Amnesty International has exposed a decade of violence, human rights violations, and killings in Nigeria’s South-East, implicating both state-backed security forces and armed non-state groups.
The 72-page document, titled “A Decade of Impunity: Attacks and Unlawful Killings in South-East Nigeria”, covers the period from January 2021 to December 2024. It details widespread abuses, including unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, internal displacement, and suppression of movement.
According to Amnesty, at least 1,844 people were killed between January 2021 and June 2023 in attacks linked to multiple actors. These include:
- State-backed forces, such as the regional paramilitary group Ebube Agu and the Nigerian military.
- Non-state armed groups, including the Eastern Security Network (ESN), the armed wing of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), so-called “unknown gunmen,” cult gangs, vigilantes, and armed herders.
The report also links violence to land and grazing disputes in Enugu and Ebonyi states and warns of communities turned into “ungoverned spaces” — such as Agwa and Izombe in Imo, and Lilu in Anambra — where residents were displaced and armed groups seized control.
Cult-related killings were described as rampant in Anambra State, with towns like Obosi, Awka, Onitsha, Ogidi, and Umuoji witnessing repeated bloodshed.
Amnesty condemned the enforcement of IPOB’s August 9, 2021, “sit-at-home” order, which it said violated residents’ rights to life, education, and free movement.
The report further accused Ebube Agu of torture, extortion, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and destruction of homes since its creation by South-East governors in April 2021.
The Nigerian military was also implicated for rights violations during Operation Python Dance (2016, 2017) and Operation Udo Ka (2023), including extrajudicial executions and indiscriminate airstrikes.
Amnesty concluded that the South-East security crisis is a “hybrid of criminal and political violence”, warning that both sides manipulate the conflict to suit their agendas, often oversimplifying it as an IPOB/ESN insurgency while ignoring its deeper, more complex causes.
