Nigeria’s Human Rights Commission will on Friday reveal its findings from a probe into a Reuters report, which alleged that the military ran a secret, systematic and illegal abortion programme and massacred children in its fight against Islamist insurgents in the northeast.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), appointed by the government, created a special panel in February 2023 to investigate the reports published by Reuters. The panel held hearings in Abuja, the capital, and Borno state in the northeast.
The Nigerian military has rejected the claims made in the news agency’s articles.
On Thursday, the NHRC invited the media and announced that the panel was prepared to share its findings and recommendations with the public in Abuja.
In previous instances, some rights advocates have criticised the NHRC for not holding the government accountable, pointing to its failure to secure prosecutions of high-ranking Nigerian officials accused of human rights violations—a lack of accountability highlighted in reports by the United Nations and the U.S. State Department.
Nonetheless, the commission has previously released impactful reports against the government. In October 2020, large-scale protests led to a successful demand for the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) police unit, of which the NHRC found members had engaged in extortion, torture, and the killing of civilians.
That same month, security forces fired upon protesters in Lagos, resulting in the deaths of at least 11 individuals, as reported by a state judicial panel that the NHRC assisted in establishing.