By Raphael Ekpang
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has raised the alarm of the mode of appearance and the disappearance of Reuters’ lawyer at the commission headquarters on Friday in Abuja.
The lawyer from Reuters, Clifford Kalu, had walked into the hearing session of the Special Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations in Counter Insurgency Operations in the North East (SIIP-NE) unannounced, and he was asked to wait a little while, but he apparently disappeared, a situation the Commission has expressed concern over the curious manner in which the lawyer came to the panel, having earlier declined to appear.
However, the Commission is suspecting foul play by Reuters because when a member of the secretariat of the panel asked him to wait in the waiting room, as the panel cannot have both Reuters and the Army in the hall while the cross-examination of the top military official is going on, Mr. Clifford left, again unannounced, and never came back.
Earlier, the panel’s Secretary, Mr. Hilary Ogbonna, had invited Reuters to appear before the panel to substantiate its allegations of abortion of 10,000 pregnancies, massacre of children, and other forms of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against the Nigerian military in its counter-insurgency operations in the North East.
But, the international media turned down the invitation only for its lawyer Clifford’s to appeared before the panel unexpectedly.
“On March 21, 2023, Reuters, through the services of Olumide Babalola chambers, wrote a letter to the Commission titled, “Notice of objection to summons to witnesses dated the 16th day of March 2023 issued on Paul Carsten, Reade Levinson, David Lewis, Libby George, and Christophe Van Der Perre brought pursuant to Section 6 (2)(b) (e) of the National Human Rights Commission Act 2010. In the letter, Reuters claimed that the witnesses do not have any physical or business presence in Nigeria and, by extension, are outside the territorial jurisdiction of the panel.’
Meanwhile, the panel heard the testimony of Mr. Emmanuel Ajah, country director of Marie Stopes, an international organization that provides family planning services. Marie Stopes was alleged to have been involved in the abortion saga. In his testimony, Mr. Ajah said that his organization does not conduct illegal abortions but provides post-abortion care and that the Reuters allegation is a pure misrepresentation of facts.
Mr. Ajah, who said his organization collaborated with public offices in the country in the course of their services, the country director, and Dr. Kingsley Odogwu, a specialist gynecologist with Marie Stopes in their oral evidence before the panel said that they only had cases where women who are at risk of their lives are given medical assistance to save their lives during complicated medical conditions.
