A coalition of Tiv community leaders has appealed to President Bola Tinubu and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mr Nuhu Ribadu, to intervene in the alleged calculated plan to depopulate and displace Tiv indigenes of Nasarawa from their ancestral lands under the guise of agricultural development.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja on behalf of the coalition of Tiv community leaders, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Mr. Jerry Terka Aondo alleged the use of state machinery, including the military, civil defence corps and key ministries, to systematically demolish Tiv villages and suppress their traditional institutions in Awe, Obi, Keana, and Doma Local Government Areas of Nasarawa.
Aondo alleged that, the Nasarawa state government is orchestrating an “ethnic cleansing agenda” masked as an agricultural expansion initiative, alleging also that the entire Tiv communities of Udugh, Utsuwa, Usula, China, Chabo, Wachi, Tyungu, Uvirkaa, Ugba, and over a dozen others have either been demolished, marked for destruction, or faced forced displacement.
“In Udugh village, bulldozers arrived with armed soldiers and civil defence operatives to destroy homes, schools, churches, and even graveyards.
“The people were given no option but to abandon their ancestral homes,” Aondo said, and further alleged that women in Osula village were driven from their farmlands by government agents, leaving families vulnerable and without their only means of livelihood.
“What is happening is not development. It is ethnic persecution carried out in the name of agriculture,” he further alleged.
The senior lawyer also alleged that traditional rulers were being used as instruments of oppression by refusing to sign indigene certificates and assisting in the destruction of Tiv settlements.
Aondo cited recent attacks, including the burning of Gbaghtar village in Doma LGA by armed herdsmen on the night of May 10, as evidence of state-enabled insecurity targeted at Tiv communities, warning that, “The actions are dividing ethnic groups and may trigger wider communal unrest if not addressed immediately.
“We are calling on the government of President Tinubu and the NSA to deploy machinery to combat this insecurity in the name of agricultural mandate of the federal and state governments.
“This is about grabbing land, erasing our identity, and commercializing our lives and properties for personal gain”, the senior lawyer stated and urged the Federal Government to halt the demolitions, adding that, “If unchecked, these actions could plunge Nasarawa State into a deeper conflict with long-term consequences”.
The SAN said, the Tiv people who seek peaceful coexistence with other ethnic groups in Nasarawa State, “Are praying to God to touch the heart of the Nasarawa state governor to have mercy on the Tiv people of Nasarawa”.
He said letters have been written to the Governor, Secretary to the State Government, Commissioner of Police of Nasarawa State, Speaker of the state House of Assembly, DSS, and Commissioner of Agriculture in Nasarawa on the issue, with no response from any of them.
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