Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
Amnesty International has revealed that at least 149 people, including children and babies, died between January and May 2016 under appalling conditions at the military detention facility in Giwa Barracks, Maiduguri, Borno State. The global human rights organisation disclosed this in a statement issued on Saturday, September 19, 2026, re-publishing findings from its 2016 investigation, which documented the scale of deaths and the deplorable conditions endured by detainees at the military facility in northeastern Nigeria.
According to Amnesty International, at least 12 children died at the barracks within one month, while 65 people died there in March 2016 alone. The organisation said the likely causes of the deaths included disease, hunger, dehydration, severe overcrowding and gunshot wounds. The report highlights the dire conditions faced by detainees at Giwa Barracks, a military detention facility in Maiduguri that has previously been the subject of concerns over the treatment and welfare of people held there. Amnesty International said the deaths occurred amid conditions that were severely inadequate for the number of people detained at the facility.
The organisation's account particularly raises concerns over the deaths of children and babies in military custody, as well as the high number of fatalities recorded within a single month. The 65 deaths recorded in March 2016 represented a significant proportion of the total 149 deaths documented by Amnesty International between January and May that year. The human rights organisation said the combination of disease, lack of adequate food and water, overcrowding and injuries contributed to the deaths of detainees.
The Guardian, which reported on the Amnesty findings in May 2016, noted that at least 149 people, including a five-month-old baby and several toddlers, died after being held in appalling conditions at the notorious military detention centre. Amnesty estimated that more than 1,200 people were detained without access to justice or the outside world at Giwa Barracks. The facility had become dangerously overcrowded as the military carried out mass arrests, often arbitrary, as part of its offensive against Boko Haram. Amnesty said that with cells too full to allow people to lie down, insufficient food and water, and communal buckets for toilets, starvation, disease and dehydration were killing detainees.
However, the crowded and unsanitary conditions were not the only causes of death. Evidence allegedly showed that some inmates appeared to have been shot dead, while satellite images revealed recently dug graves. Amnesty believed that 120 children were being held in Giwa and that at least a dozen had died since February 2016. One witness said they had seen the bodies of eight dead children, including a five-month-old, two one-year-olds, a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four-year-old and two five-year-olds. The number of people detained in three overcrowded women's cells, where children under five were held, had risen from 25 the previous year to 250 in 2016. Amnesty believed there were about 20 babies and children under five in each of the three cells.
A woman detained in Giwa for more than four months told Amnesty that pleas for medical attention for children were ignored. "Measles started when [the] hot season started," she said. "In the morning, two or three [were ill]; by the evening five babies [were ill]. You will see the fever, the body is very hot and they will cry day and night. The eyes were red and the skin will have some rashes. Later, some medical personnel came and confirmed that this is measles." Although visits from medical staff increased after those children died, others continued to perish. Between April 22 and 25, a one-year-old boy, a five-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl died, according to Amnesty.
Netsanet Belay, Amnesty International's Africa research and advocacy director, said that although the abuses carried out in Giwa had been documented before, they remained shocking. "The discovery that babies and young children have died in appalling conditions in military detention is both harrowing and horrifying," he said. "We have repeatedly sounded the alarm over the high death rate of detainees in Giwa."
The re-publication of the Amnesty findings in September 2026, more than a decade after the events they describe, serves as a stark reminder of the horrors that have occurred in Nigeria's military detention facilities and the urgent need for accountability. The deaths at Giwa Barracks remain one of the most damning indictments of the Nigerian military's conduct during the Boko Haram insurgency, and the failure to hold anyone accountable for the deaths of 149 people, including children, continues to haunt the nation's conscience. As Nigeria continues to grapple with insecurity and the treatment of detainees, the ghosts of Giwa Barracks demand that the lessons of the past not be forgotten.
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