Muhammad Sabiu, Author at Tribune Online

Rising from their meeting in Kaduna, a coalition of Middle Belt groups under the aegis of 'Civic Coalition Against Mass Attrocites' has called for urgent intervention by the Federal Government over the deteriorating security situation in the zone. It said the hostilities in Middle Belt region must end as the wanton destruction and mass killings in Plateau, Benue, among other place,s is an eyesore. Convener of the Coalition, Ballason Gloria Mabeiam, said at a press conference in Kaduna on Thursday that the persistent violence, characterised by targeted attacks on communities, massacres and mass abductions have resulted in countless lives lost and many more injured, broken and traumatised. The perpetrators, she said has emptied entire communities and set about replacing them with imported settlers. "In recent times there appear to be three main additional triggers for the current upsurge of terrorist violence including first, the impending national census, for which carving a territory for the terrorist bandits will make them owners of the land after the census since the owners of the land will not be available to be counted in their houses," she said. She disclosed that the second reason is an acceleration of the crisis with the impending 2027 elections to potentially disenfranchise the middle belt. "While the third reason is the institutionalisation of the livestock ministry which appears to be erroneously interpreted as official signal for the takeover of land for the settlement of pastoralists. "The opening of new fronts of terrorists operations in Niger and Kwara states under the Lakurawa and Mahmuda armed groups heighten fears and concerns of safety and security. "We have undertaken a careful mapping of the trajectory and pattern of the attacks in affected states, accompanied by an assessment of the wanton loss of human lives, properties, communities and coexistence," she said. The coalition said the patterns evident in this latest bout of violence include the following:" The states and communities of the Middle Belt now suffering this campaign of systematic ethnic cleansing are all land-locked with no direct access to international borders. "These attacks have been accompanied by methodical displacement of the affected communities. The perpetrators seek explicitly to liquidate the inhabitants of the affected communities and frighten any survivors into fleeing from their lands. "The lands being taken over and now being resettled forcibly constitute a contiguous stretch of over 20,000 square kilometers across the territories of Benue, Nasarawa, and Plateau States. "These attacks are also destroying farming and resilience mechanisms in the traditional bread basket of Nigeria and have devastating consequences for food security in the country. "In effect, this is a campaign of ethnic cleansing which also has the effect of deliberately and methodically reshaping the electoral maps of the affected states. "We demand an urgent meeting of the governors of the states of the Middle Belt to define and adopt a co-ordinated, regional security strategy and to ensure all lands forcibly seized and occupied by terrorists and belligerents are returned to the autochthonous communities across Nigeria. "Consultation with Governors of Border States: We equally demand an urgent meeting of the Governors of the Border States of northern Nigeria to address the root causes of these massacres." The coalition called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the federal government to prioritise the Constitutional mandate for the security and welfare of the people, to deploy aids to distressed communities and ensure communities are secured for governance, census and elections. "We remain committed to supporting initiatives that promote peace, justice, and accountability in Nigeria and are ready to collaborate with authorities both in providing the body of evidence that informs our positions and in implementing sustainable solutions to this political crisis with profound humanitarian consequence," the Coalition added. ALSO READ TOP STORIES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE