Army Refuses To Release Bodies Of Soldiers Killed By Boko Haram To Families, Plans Secret Burial

A secret plan to bury the victims is being protested by family members of soldiers killed in a recent battle with Boko Haram members. 

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Sahara Reporters has revealed that the Nigerian army is planning to secretly bury soldiers killed by Boko Haram terrorists.

The Nigerian Army scheduled the burial on Tuesday, according to the report, as family members of the late soldiers protested.

Boko Haram terrorists have targeted soldiers in the past month, waiting for them in an ambush.

On Friday, approximately three soldiers were killed when insurgents engaged the military in a four-hour battle to take control of the town of Dikwa in the state of Borno.

The attack occurred a few hours after the handing over of Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai as Chief of the Army Staff to Major General Ibrahim Attahiru.

There were many casualties, including soldiers, in the gun battle, which began around 6:00 pm and lasted until around 10:00 pm.

The group ambushed and fired machine guns at a Nigerian army patrol in Borno State on January 22, 2021, killing seven troops and injuring others. Also, the gunmen captured an ATV and ammunition.

The attack took place barely five days after seven IEDs were activated by the gunmen against a convoy of Armoured Personnel Carriers and other vehicles from the Nigerian Army escorted by a foot patrol in Gorgi, Borno State.

Over 30 soldiers were killed during the ambush, according to military sources. Three vehicles and an armoured vehicle were also destroyed by the gunmen.

A major in the army, however, told SaharaReporters that the military authorities had finalized plans to conduct a ‘secret’ burial on Tuesday for some of the dead soldiers whose bodies are still in the mortuary.

He accused the army authorities of failing to open up their families to the fate of fallen soldiers.

“They will be buried at a cemetery here in Maiduguri on Tuesday. Sadly, the military failed to open up their families to the fates of most of these fallen soldiers. The military authorities have yet to inform the families of some of these dead soldiers who are planning to bury them tomorrow. How are you going to bury someone whose family members think they are still alive? The bodies of their loved ones were not given even to those who were informed,” he said.

The brother of one of the dead soldiers told SaharaReporters that his colleague had made the family aware of his death because the army authorities had initially failed to inform them.

He said, “The army did not inform us initially.” It was one of his colleagues who told me that Boko Haram had killed him, so I spoke to someone in our town who was a major general, and I think he made a few moves. So, on Saturday night, we got a call from them informing us that he was dead. Imagine, we would not have been aware at all without his colleague telling us.

So we asked them about the process of moving his corpse home for burial, but they told us that they would not release his body to us. We explained to them that being buried in a foreign land was a taboo in our village, but they insisted that his body would not be released to us. They informed us later that his next of kin and one other member of the family should come to Maiduguri because on Tuesday he would be buried.

In 2020, the Wall Street Journal, a US newspaper, reported how the military had secretly dumped the remains of Boko Haram’s killed soldiers in unmarked mass graves.

The paper quoted families of fallen soldiers as saying that in its handling of the tragic deaths of their loved ones, the military was untidy.

On the eve of the visit of President Muhammad Buhari to Borno, it was said that army commanders secretly moved soldiers’ corpses from the morgue to unmarked graves.

“According to several soldiers at the base, when President Buhari visited the Maiduguri base in November, commanders rushed to bury bodies they had collected at the morgue from the recent attack on the Metele base and several others,” the report read.

“The bodies were moved from the morgue to unmarked tombs under the cover of darkness.”

We could see the headlamps and torches of the engineering division digging the graves,” a soldier was quoted as saying.”