Upwards of 300 residents of Obigbo (Oyigbo) in Rivers State are currently languishing in secret detention camps, according to the Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law (Intersociety).

“While scores have been permanently disappeared, between 200 and 300 others are still being held captive in secret or undisclosed military facilities within and outside Rivers State,” Intersociety said Tuesday in a statement issued from its head office in Onitsha, Anambra State.

It repeated its claims in an earlier statement on November 19 that “over 60 defenseless citizens mostly belonging to Igbo Ethnic Nationality were shot and killed by soldiers of the heavily Muslim dominated Nigerian Army and that between 90 and 100 others were shot and deadly injured” in Obigbo.

Intersociety in Tuesday’s statement faulted the military operation in Obigbo. “The Obigbo Army Massacre, professionally speaking, does not require ‘war-grade’ Army operation to fish out criminals who, during the country-wide EndSARS protests, killed the ‘unknown’ soldiers and identified police officers and torched a number of publicly owned security facilities at Obigbo. Combination of intelligence, detection and technology would have been used and these would have been perfectly, quietly and innocuously executed using combined hands of Military Intelligence and Military Police as well as Police CIB/CID and SSS,” the group said in the statement signed by Board Chair Emeka Umeagbalasi and Head of Civil Liberties & Rule of Law, Obianuju Igboeli, Esq.

It argued that the military operation cannot be justified by the alleged unlawful activities of the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in Obigbo.

According to Intersociety, “It must be reminded that Right to Self Determination using nonviolence is a guaranteed local, regional and international human right, enshrined in the country’s Treaty Laws acceded to by the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It must also be maintained that nothing on earth, rested on moral conscience, convention and humane law can justify the declaration by the present Government of Nigeria of the duo of ‘IPOB’(Indigenous People of Biafra) and ‘IMN’ (Islamic Movement in Nigeria) as ‘terrorist organizations’.

“As activists grounded in law, criminology, security studies and modern military science, all the characteristics and circumstances qualifying an armed opposition group to be so designated are totally absent. At least, as at the time the two socio-cultural bodies were vindictively proscribed and till date, there are no sufficient pieces of factual evidence showing they have taken up arms against the People and Federal Republic of Nigeria or any part thereof. The Nigerian Constitution in Section 36 (8 &12) also prohibits retroactive criminal legislations, trials and punishments.”