EVEN in conventional wars, there is emphasis on the safety of civilian population. Enough intelligence is gathered to isolate and attack the target.

The December 1 invasion of Ayakoromor in Burutu by the Joint Task Force, JTF, is another of the efforts that solve nothing  but cause avoidable attacks on civilians  in the Niger Delta. It is the responsibility of the government to protect ordinary people who are unarmed, helpless – and they are not criminals.

It is shameful that the military cannot fish out its targets. Why does it have to waste the lives of civilians in search of John Togo? When will the attacks on criminals be carried out without killing innocent civilians?

When Gbaramatu was attacked in search of Government Ekpumopolo, Tompolo, ordinary people died, those who survived live with their scars. Is Tompolo not part of government after accepting the amnesty? Has government compensated the families of the dead, or paid them for their lost property?

Odi, in Bayelsa State, was devastated on 20 November 1999. Hundreds of people died. When former Senate President Chuba Okadigbo visited Odi in December he said, “I am shocked. There is nothing to say, as there is nobody to speak with”.

Military trucks arrived Odi a day before the attack, loaded with thousands of soldiers. Naval gunboats joined in the attack which was a reprisal for the loss of 12 policemen. The impression was that everyone was guilty of the crime.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo attacked Odi five days before a 24 November ultimatum he gave for the state government to produce the criminals.

Zaki Biam in Benue State was next. In October 2001, hundreds of soldiers invaded the place, killing more than 100 people in a rescue mission for eight of their colleagues. Four years after the military apologised to the villagers.

In his widely published valedictory Major Paul Okutimo, who led the Internal Task Force on Security in Ogoniland, in 1994 boasted to journalists that he was a specialist trained in over 200 ways of elimination.

The Ogoni attack in his words, “The first three days of the operation, I operated in the night. Nobody knew where I was coming from. What I will just do is that I will just take some detachment of soldiers; they will just stay at four corners of the town. They have automatic (rifles) that sold death. If you hear the sound, you will freeze.

Then I will equally now choose about 200 soldiers and give them grenade explosives, very hard ones.

“So we shall surround the town at night. The machine gun with 500 rounds will open up. When four or five like that open up and then we are throwing grenades, what do you think people are going to do? And we have already put roadblock on the main road, we don’t want anybody to start running (we decided) we shall drive all these people into the bush with nothing except the pants and wrappers they are using that night.”

Umuechem came closest to the Odi experience. Rioting youth abducted three policemen in the Rivers State town in 1990. The youths were protesting environmental pollution and neglect of their town by Shell. A detachment of policemen rolled in with an armoured tank and sophisticated combat weapons.

An official inquiry revealed, 25 persons killed, 650 buildings destroyed and 175 bicycles charred. The federal and state governments owned up to the wanton destruction and paid compensation of N12 million to the people of Umuechem.

Elsewhere, perpetrators of these killings would have been on trial. The National Assembly should ask JTF to account for its activities. The attacks on civilians are indefensible. We cannot continue killing innocent people because we lack the training to smoke out criminals.