Over 1,000 soldiers killed on the
battlefront in the fight against insurgency were secretly buried in Maiduguri,
Borno state, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Quoting military sources, the
newspaper said the number of soldiers buried in that manner could be higher
than the figure.
It said on the eve of President
Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Borno in November, army commanders secretly moved
corpses of soldiers from a morgue to unmarked graves.
“When President Buhari visited
the Maiduguri base in November, commanders rushed to bury bodies that had
collected at the morgue from the recent attack on the base in Metele and
several others, according to several soldiers at the base,” the report read.
“They moved the bodies from the
morgue into the unmarked graves under cover of darkness.”
A soldier was quoted as saying:
“We could see the headlamps and the torches of the engineering division digging
the graves.”
The report said as the commanders
prepared the base for the president’s arrival, they also drafted in additional
medical staff to treat the dozens of wounded soldiers in the base’s hospital
wards.
It said as soldiers tried to
register complaints about their conditions when Buhari addressed them, the
president pledged to do everything within his powers to continue empowering
them.
The military authorities are
reportedly trying to expand the secret graveyard.
“As the secret cemetery at the
Maimalari barracks grows, the military has expanded the site into neighboring
fields,” the report read.
Sarah James, a 50-year-old
farmer, was quoted as saying: “The farmland has been fenced off so they can
bury the forces.”
TheCable could not reach Sagir
Musa, army spokesman, for reaction as of the time of this report. He neither
answered calls nor replied a text message sent.
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those killing our soldiers and those burying them like dogs shall not know peace, they shall also die gruesomely
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