LAGOS: Amnesty International on Friday urged Nigeria to release the findings of a report on rights abuses by security forces three years after the government ordered the probe.

The campaigning group has accused security forces of hundreds of extra-judicial killings, rape, torture, and enforced disappearances, claims the military has always denied.

A presidential panel was set up in 2017 and investigators submitted a report a year later but it was never released to the public, a decision that Amnesty described as "a gross display of contempt for victims".

"Victims and the larger public in Nigeria deserve to see and scrutinise the findings," said Osai Ojigho, Nigeria director of Amnesty in a statement.

"We are calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to fulfil the promise he made in 2015 to end impunity by immediately releasing the report," he added.

Amnesty said it made presentations during the public hearings of the panel which sat in several cities in Nigeria.It has accused the security forces of extra-judicial executions of 350 Shiite members in 2015 and 150 pro-Biafran supporters the following year.

The military, under pressure to halt rising insecurity across Africa's most populous country, have faced mounting calls to investigate widespread rights abuses.