Former Minister of Education, Professor Jerry Agada; ex-Minister of Interior, Abba Moro; ex-Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Abubakar Tsav, and a leader of a coalition of cultural groups in the state, Chief Ode Enyi, said IGP’s statement confirmed the collaboration by the security agencies with the murders.
Tsav said: “The IGP is unfair to my people. If such happens to his people, will he have said such a thing? It is unprofessional of him. Why should he say it was a communal crisis? Was there any report of dead of Fulanis? The IGP was already biased and out to protect his job,” asking, ‘how can he call this ethnic crisis when Tiv people, including pregnant women and children, were killed with no Fulani casualty.”
Tsav called on the Federal Government to take urgent steps to address the perennial crisis by setting up a commission of inquiry which, he said, he had advocated over the years with no one listening to him.
Professor Agada regretted that such statement could come from number one policeman in the country and submitted that the ‘IGP was uninformed’.
He noted that the statement was not satisfactory to the people of the state and charged him to be acquaintted with security of the country, stressing that, “with the statement, it seems the security problem in the country has overwhelmed him.”
Agada called on the government to intervene by providing adequate security across the state and should not leave the security issue to the state government alone.
Also speaking, spokesman of the cultural groups, Chief Enyin was hard on the IGP who he described as ‘someone who seems to be bereft of his office.
“That statement was unfortunate from IGP it depict what we have been saying that there is a collaboration from the top to ensure the extinction of Benue people.”
“How could a man of his calibre does not know that a communal clash is a problem between two communities cohabiting, but these people would only come and fight and then run away and at times take over our land.”
Enyi asked the IGP to tell Nigerians the number of casualties on the side of the Fulani herdsmen if the crisis was a communal one.
Abba Moro, who also condemned the attack, called on government in Benue State to re examine the new law.
He explained that the implementation of any law was germane, while agreeing that ranching was now the best practice globally. The former minister submitted that the state government should provide enabling environment with stipulated time for interested herders to be able to have their ranches and those who would not relocate to other areas.
Moro further called for a stakeholders’ meeting that will engage every right thinking member of the state to discuss and examine the law.
He called on the Federal Government to take necessary steps that would nail the crisis in the bud, condemning reactionary steps being taken after each attack.
He stressed that such steps would not bring the dead back and advocated a proactive measure to halt the incessant killings.
Enyi said his group, which comprised Mzough U Tiv, Idoma National Forum and On’yi Igede, would anytime from now stage a protest to the National Assembly, Aso Rock Villa and other national and international institutions in Abuja to draw support to the plight of the people of the state.
He decried the lukewarm attitude of the government and that of President Buhari in particular to the crisis in the state.
The national president, National Union of Benue State Students (NUBESS), Vera Ladi Akasi, lamented that the Benue killings had continued unabated while President Muhammad Buhari remained aloof.
She stated that it was sad that students and youths of the state had not heard anything from him who is the president since the killing started.
Akasi, who spoke to Sunday Tribune in Makurdi at the weekend, disclosed that the reason why Benue State students protested the other day was because of Buhari refused to address the killings in the state.
On his part, the national coordinator of Coalition for Good Governance and Change Initiative, Okpokwu Ogenyi, said Fulani herdsmen had bitten more than they would chew.
‘’What happened in Benue is quite alarming, barbaric, heinous and unimaginable,” he stated.
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