By Tosin Olatokunbo
The Middle Belt Forum, MBF has expressed dissatisfaction with the federal government’s failure to arrest the incessant killing of innocent people in Southern Kaduna, Nigeria.
The MBF raised the concern amid condemnations by human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN and others, of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration failure to rein in criminals who have been killing residents the way they like.
Scores of people, including children and women have been killed in the wanton bloodshed that started last Friday and still continued on Sunday.
Towns such as Ziplak, a suburb town in Fanswam, Southern Kaduna Local Government and other towns have been hit by the orgy of bloodshed in the last few days, as armed bandits laid siege to the state.
The state governor, Nasir El-Rufai has already imposed a curfew which has obviously failed to return peace to the restive state.
The violence has been made worse over accusation that security agencies sent to protect lives and property are not doing enough to repose confidence between old foes; the southern Kaduna people, predominantly Christians and Fulani settlers.
Afenifere, Ohanaeze, South-South Leaders Forum and other socio-cultural organisations in Southern Nigeria have already accused military men deployed to the area of taking sides.
The Presidency on its part claimed that the killings in Southern Kaduna were politically-motivated and orchestrated by criminal gangs.
But not so with MBF National President, Pogu Bitrus, who blamed the President Buhari for turning a blind eye to the horrifying carnage.
The MBF leader was responding to Garba Shehu, president’s Buhari’s spokesman comment that from “available security records, the problem in Southern Kaduna is an evil combination of politically-motivated killings and mutual violence by criminal gangs acting on ethnic and religious grounds.”
He said such comment was insensitive after hundreds of people have been asininely slaughtered and thousands sacked from their homes and now in Internally Displaced Person camps shows that it is either ignorant of the reality on the ground or have chosen to toe the path of falsehood.
Bitrus called on the federal government to do something fast because “The recent killings of no fewer than 12 persons in Kafanchan on Friday’s night and last weekend’s gruesome murder of 38 people in Southern Kaduna within a span of four days is a pointer that the area is becoming the nation’s dark axis of death that has attracted national and global outrage.
The ongoing bloodshed in Southern Kaduna has been characterised with the decimation of both the populace and communities strictly for conquest and occupation.”
From Chikun to Birnin Gwari, from Kachia to Sanga, the bloody signature of massive killings is there for all to see. Many communities in Southern Kaduna have been sacked and several hundreds of innocent citizens killed, with increasing spates of attacks threatening the security of the area.’
The angry MBF leader said his people may resort to self help to protect themselves from the bandits who have consistently turned Southern Kaduna to a killing field.
According to him “The criminalisation of self-defence by the government has turned Southern Kaduna people into easy targets for terrorist herdsmen to gruesomely murder and destroy many communities.”
Bitrus called the state political leaders and security agencies to action.
In the face of the gruesome killings “The MBF calls on members of the state and the federal lawmaker representing these areas under siege to stand up for their people. Without walking together for the common cause, the dawn for a new day will take a long while to come.
We call on the military to ensure they do not take sides with invading terrorist herdsmen forces that are leaving trails of blood and gloom as they engage in deadly attacks on Southern Kaduna and other Middle Belt communities.
“For peace to return to these attacked areas, the cooperation of the members of the public and impartiality of the military are critical in defeating these forces of evil that have wreaked devastating havoc on our people,” he said.
Meanwhile, Falana in a statement issued on behalf of the Alliance for Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond, ASCAB, on Sunday said the Buhari administration has ran out of ideas on how to secure lives and property of Nigerians.
He said Nigerians are now at the mercy of terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and criminal gangs and that the government has not shown capacity to deal with insecurity across the country.
