The Army alleged that IPOB intended to circulate prerecorded or manipulated material and announced an inquiry into the source and actors. Nine years later, no published finding connecting that allegation to this footage, identifying the actors or recording a disciplinary outcome was located.
Operation Egwu Eke II, known publicly as Python Dance II, ran across the southeast in September 2017 while Tukur Buratai was Chief of Army Staff. It began before its announced commencement date at Afaraukwu in Umuahia North, the home community of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra. Armored vehicles moved through civilian areas in what the Army described as a show of force. Documented
An exercise announced for one date that starts early at one man’s home town is not a routine deployment. Whether it was directed at that community, on whose instruction, and under what rules of engagement, is answerable from a single document. No copy of the operational order for Egwu Eke II was located in the public record reviewed, and no application for it by any Nigerian oversight body was located. Documented + Inference
Plate 15. The sequence of Operation Egwu Eke II across September 2017, from the early start at Afaraukwu to the public statement of 26 September.
A show of force is an operational category with a defined purpose. Armor is moved through populated areas to communicate capability to a civilian population, and the population it addresses is chosen by whoever plans the route. The route taken through the southeast in September 2017, the formations tasked, and the officer who approved the plan are recorded in documents the Nigerian Army holds and has not released. Documented + Inference
Two incidents at civilian premises bracketed the operation. Soldiers entered the Abia State secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists on 12 September, and the Afaraukwu compound was raided two days later. A trade-union office and a private residence are civilian premises on any view, and the retrieved public record does not establish a lawful basis for entering either. Documented + Inference
The footage
Video circulated on 12 and 13 September 2017. It shows uniformed men compelling a group of men into muddy water and striking them with canes. Contemporaneous reports located the scene on the Aba–Umuahia road in Isiala Ngwa, Abia State, and described the men as being made to drink the water in which they were lying. The Catholic Bishop of Umuahia, the Most Rev. Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, described the same clips in a public statement of 26 September 2017. Documented
Some who circulated the footage asserted that men visible in the water were dead or dying. That claim came from parties with an interest in how the footage was read. Alleged
No post-mortem, named decedent, medical record or judicial finding supporting that assertion was located. Documented Nothing in this installment states that anyone drowned. The restraint is not deference to the Army. It is the difference between a file that survives cross-examination and one that collapses the moment a single sentence cannot be proved, and the analysis loses nothing by it, for reasons set out below.
The Ugorji statement carries a specific and limited evidentiary weight. It establishes that the footage was circulating in the diocese by 26 September 2017 and that its contents had caused public concern among people in the affected area. It does not establish when or where the footage was recorded, who appears in it, which military formation was involved, or whether the Bishop himself witnessed any part of the incident. Documented + Inference
The Army’s answer, and what became of it
Colonel Sagir Musa, then Deputy Director of Army Public Relations at 82 Division Enugu, gave the Army’s response within days. He alleged that the Indigenous People of Biafra had planned to circulate prerecorded or manipulated material, and he stated that the Army was investigating the source and the actors and would take disciplinary action against any personnel found to have breached its rules. Documented
The Army therefore made three commitments in public: to establish the source, to identify the actors, and to punish anyone responsible. Nine years on, the searches located no published finding connecting the allegation to this footage, no identified actor and no disciplinary outcome. Documented + Inference
What is examined here is circulating open-source footage whose original file, complete chain of custody and technical provenance have not been independently established. No forensic examination of it has been completed for this file, and none by any Nigerian authority was located. The Army’s allegation that IPOB intended to circulate prerecorded or manipulated material was never supported by a published finding connecting that allegation to this footage. Documented + Inference
A proper examination would record the earliest located upload, the original or highest-quality retrieved file, its hash, metadata and recompression findings, frame-by-frame geolocation, terrain and roadside comparison, uniform, insignia, weapon and vehicle analysis, any witness or uploader identification, and the limitations preventing a final conclusion. Techniques of that kind were available in 2017 and remain available. Whether any authority applied them is not shown by the retrieved record. Documented + Inference
Plate 16. What the September 2017 footage places on the record, and the propositions it does not establish.
The domestic legal protections that applied and went unused
Sections 34 and 35 of the Constitution protected the dignity and liberty of the men shown in the footage. Confinement on a roadside amounts to a deprivation of liberty whether or not the soldiers described it as an arrest. Section 36(8) bars retroactive criminal liability, and the Anti-Torture Act commenced after the recorded conduct and cannot be applied retrospectively. The exact title, edition and relevant sections of the Abia State Criminal Code enactment applicable in September 2017 were not retrieved for this file, and no substantive offense under an unidentified enactment is asserted here. Documented + Inference
Lethal-force analysis has no application here. Section 33(2) of the Constitution supplies the constitutional justifications for depriving a person of life, and nobody in the footage is shown being killed. What governs is section 34, which admits of no exception in its terms. The prohibition on torture and on inhuman or degrading treatment is not subject to a proportionality assessment or to a public-order override, and no state of emergency was in force in Abia State in September 2017 that could alter that position. Documented + Inference
The Rome Statute provisions engaged
Cruel and degrading treatment are not listed as separate crimes against humanity, so the domestic categories above do not map across directly. Two provisions are engaged. Article 7(1)(f) lists torture, and Article 7(2)(e) defines it as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused. Men confined in a roadside pool by uniformed personnel who direct their movements are, on the face of the footage, under the control of those personnel, and control is what the definition requires.
Conduct falling below the severity threshold in Article 7(2)(e) may still be reached by Article 7(1)(k), which covers other inhumane acts of a character similar to the listed acts, intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health. Neither provision requires a death, which is why the absence of any drowning allegation costs this file nothing. Both require the contextual elements addressed at Part 3, and this installment establishes none of them. Inference
Nine years of public silence from authorities with power to act is what remains. The searches found no published outcome of the Army inquiry, prosecutorial charge, coroner’s finding, judicial examination of the footage, or public identification of either the men in the water or the personnel standing over them. Documented + Inference
Part 2 sets these events beside the four that preceded them and asks what a pattern can prove. The answer is less than advocates of this case usually claim and more than the Nigerian authorities have ever been required to address. What Part 1 establishes on its own is narrower. An operation started early at one man’s home town, footage the Army disputed and then stopped discussing, and nearly nine years in which no institution with power to resolve that dispute was shown to have done so. Documented + Inference
Evidence Docket
Documentary Record
Amnesty International. (2016, November 24). Nigeria: At least 150 peaceful pro-Biafra activists killed in chilling crackdown. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/
Asadu, C. (2017, September 26). Buhari made a serious mistake, says Catholic bishop on Python Dance. TheCable. https://www.thecable.ng/umuahia-catholic-diocese-buhari-history-tell-brute-force-not-solve-agitations/
Kasali, K. (2017, September 12). Army invades NUJ Secretariat in Abia. TVC News. https://www.tvcnews.tv/army-invades-nuj-secretariat-in-abia/
Musa, S. (2017, September 13). Egwu Eke: One month military exercise commences in 6 states, no civilian molested by troops in Aba. PRNigeria. https://prnigeria.com/2017/09/13/egwu-eke-military-exercise-commences-2/
Premium Times. (2017, September 14). Army reacts to video depicting harassment of civilians by soldiers. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/regional/ssouth-east/243227-army-reacts-video-depicting-harassment-civilians-soldiers.html
Primary Authorities
Anti-Torture Act 2017 (gazetted text), commenced 20 December 2017.
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), ss. 33(2), 34, 34(1)(a), 35, 36(8).
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, arts. 7(1)(f), 7(1)(k), 7(2)(e).
Records Not Retrieved
The operational order for Operation Egwu Eke II; the Nigerian Army inquiry announced in September 2017 and any report arising from it; any board of inquiry convened; the rules of engagement in force. None was located through the searches described in the note on method, and no finding is drawn from their absence.
The Criminal Code enactment of Abia State applicable in September 2017, its exact title, edition and section numbers for assault and unlawful detention, and the coroners’ legislation of Abia and Anambra States. These were not retrieved, and no charge or inquest conclusion is stated for that state on the strength of an unidentified provision.
Right of reply: no advance notice was given. Any person or institution named in this investigation may respond after publication. A substantive response will be published, and any demonstrated factual error will be corrected. The channel is published with the work and remains open for as long as this entry stands on the register. The Nigerian Army, the Directorate of Army Public Relations, 82 Division, and Lieutenant General Tukur Yusufu Buratai (retd.) may respond to any matter reported in this installment. Responses may be sent to [email protected] and will be published in full alongside it, with any disputed fact identified as disputed at the point where it appears.
