Our report based on eyewitness accounts –Amnesty International

Country Director of Amnesty International (AI), Osai Ojigho, has said its 2017/2018 report titled: They betrayed us: Women who survived Boko Haram raped, starved and detained in Nigeria was based strictly on eyewitness accounts.
Ojigho told Daily Sun, in Abuja, yesterday, that anytime a report is released, the first reaction of the military would be to defend the institution rather than look into the issues raised.
“We go on mission to these areas, we meet with the victims themselves. In total, we had 250 interviews. Forty-eight of those interviews were with women who had recently been released from Giwa Barracks and it is an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp.
“It was based on eye witness and personal account. Three of those women were at our report launch today (yesterday); to share their experiences so that they could put a human face to the story.
“These women exist, they are not fictitious, they are not trying to tell a story they have not experienced; it is their personal story,” she added.
Ojigho also said its findings were not new, and recalled that the National Human Rights Commission, in its 2015 report, “highlighted that there is already pervasive sexual exploitation going on in the camps.”
Ojigho added that other organisations had, in the past, corroborated its recent findings, insisting that they were not new.
On Tuesday, AI released the report which accused Nigerian soldiers and the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) of raping starving women in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps.
But, the Defence Headquarters (DHQ), in its reaction, through the Director, Defence Information, Brigadier General John Agim, said AI’s report is planning to destabilise and destroy the country.
Ojigho replied: “They are seeing it more like an image issue, rather than a rights issue. So, that was why their first reaction was to say ‘no, we are the good guys, we are not doing anything wrong.’
“By taking that position, they missed the point that Amnesty International is trying to make; which is that certain things have happened, people feel aggrieved because these things have happened. Unfortunately, fingers are pointing to you as the military. In this particular case, soldiers and Civilian JTF because those are the people who have perpetrated this crime. So, it means that you, as an institution, need to sit down and fish out the bag eggs within the institution. I think they are missing the point.”
Speaking on the credibility of its report, Ojigho said what AI released to the public was the result of efforts of its mission to the affected areas.
-Sun