Why Igbo Youths Shun Military recruitment despite Unemployment — Umeagbalasi

…As 6,000 families across S-East still searching for their sons, daughters

By Cyprian Ebele, Onitsha

Despite Nigeria’s rising unemployment and repeated appeals by the Federal Government, elder statesmen and other stakeholders for young Nigerians to enlist in the military, many youths in the South-East are reluctant to join the Nigerian Armed Forces.

Chairman of the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociet), Emeka Umeagbalasi, has attributed the development to alleged extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and disappearances of young people during military operations in the region.

Umeagbalasi made the disclosure in a statement issued on Monday alongside Justin Akujieze, President and Chairman of the Board of Ekwenche Research Institute, Chicago.

According to the civil society organization, more than 6,000 families across the South-East are still searching for their sons, daughters and other relatives who were allegedly arrested by security personnel.

The statement alleged that some of those arrested were subsequently branded as members or supporters of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) or its militant wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN).

The development, it said, had contributed significantly to the growing reluctance among families to give their children of military recruitment age permission to enlist in the Nigerian Armed Forces.

The statement read in part: “It is in totality of the above that tens of thousands of Igbo Land South-East families withdraw from giving their beloved sons and daughters of military recruitment age and academic and professional qualifications permission to be enlisted into the Nigerian Armed Forces.”

The group further recalled that earlier investigations had indicated that about 5,000 other South-East civilians remained untraced after alleged arrests or abductions between August 2015 and December 2019.

It alleged that some of the missing persons were transferred to detention facilities in Northern Nigeria, including the Wawa Military Cantonment in Niger State, without their families being informed of their whereabouts or granted access to them.

The statement also claimed that about 70 per cent of the more than 6,000 persons allegedly missing since January 2021 were taken by military personnel, while the remaining cases were attributed to police crack squads and the State Security Service.

“These disappearances have created a climate of fear among families and have affected their attitudes towards military recruitment,” the group stated.

Intersociet and the Ekwenche Research Institute called on the defense Headquarters and other security agencies to provide comprehensive details of persons arrested or killed during military operations in the South-East.

They demanded that such information should include the identities of those arrested, their locations of detention, the circumstances surrounding their arrests and, where applicable, details of their deaths.

The groups also called for the establishment of independent judicial commissions of inquiry in the South-East to investigate alleged cases of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses dating back to 2015.

They maintained that addressing allegations of abuses and restoring confidence among families would be crucial to changing the perception of military service among youths in the region.