Leahy Law: Letter to US Senate Foreign Relations Committee

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United Kingdom
(xxxx@outlook.com)
 
Our ref: YorExit US5
 
5 July 2021
 
Members
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Via the Chairman, Senator Bob Menendez
528 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Sirs/Madams
I write respectfully to request that you used your esteemed offices to pressurise the Biden administration to sanction the Nigeria armed forces for falling foul of the Leahy law, which prohibited using US government (USG) funds to assist units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.
 
As you know, the State Leahy Law (Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, Sect. 620M) provides that ‘No assistance shall be furnished ... to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.’
 
Also, the DOD Leahy Law (10 U.S. Code, Sect. 362) provides that ‘The Secretary of Defense shall, in consultation with the Secretary of State, ensure that prior to a decision to provide any training, equipment, or other assistance to a unit of a foreign security force full consideration is given to any credible information available to the Department of State relating to human rights violations by such unit.’
 
The Nigeria military falls foul of the Leahy law in several ways.

One, in his tweet dated 5 June 2012, Nigeria’s President Buhari, a Fulani from northern Nigeria, signalled his intent to use the Nigeria armed forces, of which he is commander-in-chief, to kill Biafrans for agitating to leave Nigeria. He wrote: ‘Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Biafra war. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.’ By this tweet, Buhari openly glorified violence and genocide against innocent Biafrans. Some 1 million Biafrans lost their lives in the 1967/70 war. I witnessed the devastation of that war in 1969 as a Yoruba teenage Red Cross volunteer helping in the refugee camps.
 
Buhari’s penchant for human rights abuses was evident during his dictatorship between 1983 and 1985. He outed the democratically elected government of Shehu Shagari in a coup. His ‘Nigerian State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree No. 2’ allowed for his indefinite, incommunicado detention of political opponents particularly prominent Yoruba politicians as well as the world renown musician, Fela Kuti. Detainees were plagued by terrible diseases and many died premature deaths. He promulgated Decree No. 4, with its retrospective effect, to hamstrung journalists and writers in order to conceal his corrupt past. Buhari’s regime was the first to sentence a woman to death by firing squad. Nobel laurate Wole Soyinka described Buhari as an ‘ethnic bigot’. Buhari recently released from life imprisonment Kabiru Umar who on Christmas 2011 detonated a bomb that killed dozens of worshippers at a Madalla Catholic Church.
 
Two, the Nigeria military conducts genocide in Biafra. On 10 June 2021, in an interview on AriseTV, Buhari confirmed the genocidal intent towards Biafrans when he said ‘[Biafra] ‘is just like a dot in a circle. Even if they want to exit, they’ll have no access to anywhere…And the way they are spread all over the country, having businesses and properties. I don’t think IPOB knows what they are talking about…In any case, we say we’ll talk to them in the language that they understand. We’ll organise the police and the military to pursue them.’
 
The Nigeria Air Force used helicopter gunships indiscriminately to kill Biafra villagers and destroy their property and farmlands. Towns are not exempt from bombardment; for example, February and May 2021 in Orlu; June 2021 in Lhitte. Shared on social media are photographs and videos of Nigerian soldiers destroying Biafra farmlands and setting buildings ablaze. Soldiers, and Abba Kyari’s armed police team , from March to April 2021, rampaged throughout Biafra abducting innocent youths and carting them away, never to be seen or heard of again. Nigeria’s military and secret police have turned Southern Nigeria into several killing fields with many hidden mass graves. Indeed, the International Criminal Court has now been invited to investigate.
 
Three, the Nigeria military provides arms and protection for Nigeria’s Fulani terrorists. In March 2021, a ‘repentant’ Fulani terrorist alleged that the Nigeria government provided them with their AK47 rifles. A cell phone recovered from Fulani herdsmen terrorists, which contained the phone numbers of military and police officers of Fulani origin, was handed to the police who in turn handed it back to the Fulani terrorists who then made a deadly wipe-out reprisal attack on the community on 2 August 2021. The Nigeria government has been unusually silent and not denied these allegations. Recently, the Buhari government airlifted to hospital for specialist treatment, where he was visited by Adamawa State Governor Bindow, a Fulani herdsmen terrorist, Mallam Nura, who had been responsible for the gruesome massacre of 370 people.
 
The Fulani bandit terrorists kidnap innocent children from their schools for ransom. They currently hold upwards of 1500 school children. Some students they kill; some they rape and make into wives. They inflict pain and torture on others, for example, using the points of swords to make multiple lacerative wounds on the naked body or by horsewhipping. The Fulani herdsmen terrorists are the most primitive in their savagery. They would invade and destroy a farm with their herds. Thereafter, they would kill the farmer and other family members, dismember the dead and display their severed heads as trophies, photographs and videos of which they then publish in online. The Fulani herdsmen terrorists force spouses and family members to watch as they rape women and girls before killing them. They do not spare children. They burn down and ethnic cleanse villages that they then occupy as their own. Benin Republic and other West African countries now have thousands of Yoruba refugees who Fulani herdsmen terrorists have forced to flee their homes.
 
Four, the Nigeria military recruits the Fulani terrorists into their ranks. Indeed, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has complained to government that the military and the police secretly recruit terrorists into their ranks. Senator Ibrahim Gaidam introduced a bill in the Nigeria Senate for the reintegration of repentant terrorists. Sheikh Gumi, a Fulani cleric, regularly made the case to government to pacify the Fulani terrorists. Nasir El-Rufai, Kaduna State Governor advised that the Fulani terrorists were just businessmen. Federal and Fulani State governments have transferred over $2 billions to the Fulani terrorists in the past year. The bandit or herdsmen terrorists are never prosecuted before their reintegration.
 
The aforesaid examples of human rights abuses by the Nigeria military prohibits the USG from selling arms to the Nigeria military or training them. As you know, the aim of Leahy is to shield citizens of other countries from potential harm from the use of US weapons by security forces guilty of gross human rights abuses. According to Leahy, the sale of US arms to the Nigeria military makes the USG liable to pay millions of USD in compensation to Nigerian victims in the tort of negligence.
 
Both Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin possess all the aforesaid evidence. They know that every unit of the Nigerian military is guilty of gross abuse of human rights. They know, or ought to know, that the letter and the spirit of Leahy require the USG immediately to:
1.     cease the sale of arms to Nigeria and discourage others from doing so.
2.     invoke Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which sets out the UN Security Council's powers to maintain peace, and allows the Council to ‘determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and to take military and non-military action to restore international peace and security’.
3.     publicly affirm the duty imposed by General Assembly Resolution 3314 [XXIX] on States not to use armed force to deprive peoples of their right to self-determination, freedom and independence, or to disrupt territorial Integrity, and on the Security Council to intervene to ensure effective protection for a non-member state (Articles 1 and 7).
 
Respectfully yours
 
 
 

Chief (Dr) Olusola Oni
MBBS, MSc, MD, LLM, GDL, FRCSEd, FWACS, FMCS, FRCSEng
(Baasegun Alabe of Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, Nigeria)
For and on Behalf of Yoruba Descendants