SMBLF Commiserates With Plateau People Over Christmas Eve Killings

The Southern and Middle Belt and Leaders Forum (SMBLF ) The SMBLF however commiserated with the affected families, and people of Plateau State, and commended the United Nations (UN), Amnesty International, the Pope, and the International Community, generally, for their unequivocal condemnation of the killings on the Plateau, while urging that the world be conscious of the grave implications of these happenings on the corporate existence of the Nigerian Federation.

It however called on the president of federal republic of Nigeria, Ahmed Tinubu to as a matter of urgency hold an honest and truthful security inquiry to determine communities wherein the original inhabitants have been displaced in the last 2 decades and enforce the immediate return and resettlement of the people in their ancestral homes.

The group also asked the president to in no distant time close all IDP camps to end the shameful and sinful policy of building such refugee camps for the indigenous peoples while their ancestral homes are allowed to be occupied by the armed invaders.

In an open letter to President Tinubu on Tuesday and signed by Chief (Dr.) E. K. Clark, OFR, CON,, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Leader Afenifere, Chief Dr. Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, MFR, OFN, CFR – President-General, Ohaneze Ndigbo Worldwide, Dr. Pogu Bitrus, President, Middle Belt Forum

Senator Emmanuel Ibok-Essien, FNSE, National Chairman, PANDEF,

SMBLF advised him to boast the the Security agencies, including the police, the Civil Defence Corps, and others to specially train and equip them to rise to the challenges as Nigeria the group said is fast becoming a banana or pariah state of its kid-gloves treatment of terrorism.

The group however expressed concern over the President Tinubu's new year message adding that it cannot be understood or shared by several millions of Nigerians particularly the people of Mangu, Bokkos, Barkin-Ladi Local Government Areas of Plateau State, where over 200 innocent villagers were killed by terrorists, with more than 300 persons injured, several properties destroyed and thousands of people displaced, between Christmas Eve, Friday 24th and Monday 26th December 2023.

SMBLF said that the unrelenting massacre bordering on ethnic cleansing and armed occupation of the territories of the indigenous peoples of the Middle-Belt and most parts of Northern Nigeria by identified ethnic militias have shown without any doubt that the Nigerian state, its government, and security forces have continued to fail in the fundamental duty of the security and welfare of citizens as the primary purpose of government as stated in Section 14(b) of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The group regretted that that audacious and reckless assertions by some prominent personalities of Fulani Extraction like Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, immediate past Governor of Kaduna State, and Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, who ought to be more "civilized", lent credence to the Fulanisation agenda stating that Nasir El-Rufai reportedly threatened that “whoever kills a Fulani herdsman, including the army, takes a death loan, repayable in 100 years” on an alleged plan by the military to dislodge a Fulani-occupied settlement on other people’s ancestral home in the outskirts of Jos, Plateau State. 

The horror of the Christmas Eve massacre in Plateau State the group regretted was not different from the situation in Benue where several communities, particularly in Kwande, Gwer-West, Guma, Makurdi, and Logo Local Government Areas were perennially attacked by the pampered armed Fulani ethnic militias who have taken over other people’s lands and homes.

Also in Kaduna State, and Southern Kaduna particularly, Chikun, Kajuru, Kachia, Zangon Kataf, Kauru, Lere, Birnin Gwari, and Giwa Local Governments are largely under the control of terrorists according to SMBLF among other places

The statement read " The Nigerian state which fought a tribal civil war to secure its corporate existence should not allow another internecine war of diverse tribes brought about by its permissive handling of provocative activities of local Fulani militias aided by collaborators from the West African sub-region and the Sahel.

"The desire of the Fulani to be treated as an exclusive “race” cannot be allowed to continue in a free and egalitarian Nation. They should seek land for their trade in the same way other Nigerians buy and manage land and stop this sense of entitlement.

"Urgent steps be taken to restructure Nigeria in line with the tenets of true federalism, to legitimize multi-level policing such that states and communities will provide commensurate security for their people.

"SMBLF holds as indisputably self-evident that all ethnic nationalities were and have settled in their portions of Nigeria before the amalgamation and establishment of Nigeria in 1914, and thus, the current rabid territorial ambition and quest for the alteration of the demographic structures of the federation will lead to chaos and internecine wars, the end of which may be the dismemberment of the fragile Nigerian Federation.

"That you, Mr President, should rise to the occasion and dare the powers that be; decisively deal with the perpetrators of the senseless killings, end the massacre, and guarantee the safety of lives and property of citizens in all parts of our country, especially the Middle Belt Region, and restore the dignity of citizens and nation

al pride; for which you will ever be remembered.