The Abdu Aboki-led Special Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations set up by the Nigerian government to probe the allegations of gross rights violation by the country’s military has commenced sitting in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.
The panel is specifically mandated to investigate the allegations of forced mass abortion on pregnant women by the troops of the Nigerian military, as revealed in an investigation by Reuters last year.
The revelations, which attracted global outrage, claimed that the Nigerian military since 2013 carried out “a secret, systematic and illegal abortion program in the country’s northeast, ending at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls” who were kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants.
