State Police: APC Has Sold Our Security for 2019

Listening to the Senate Majority Leader, Alhaji Ahmed Lawal, on BBC Hausa Service this morning where he hinted the readiness of the Senate to toe the line of APC Restructuring Committee, the Presidency and Governors’ Forum, I am left with the certainty that the ruling party has traded the security of lives and property of many Nigerians for 2019 elections. It is a great tragedy that the temptation that was resisted by the PDP for sixteen years could not be avoided by a party that came to power on a popular mandate.

Before we discuss the matter in detail, first, let us listen to Lawal, who can be heard on the audio attached to this post, saying:

“We Senators have no opinion in this meeting except what people came up with. The President, who was represented by the Vice President, has said that Nigeria has reached a stage where it is imperative for states to own their police.

“Again, the Chairman of Governors Forum - the Governor of Zamfara, Abdulaziz Yari - spoke at this meeting on behalf of Nigerian Governors. He said they are supporting the statement made by the Vice President that states should also form their own police.”

Asked whether it could be adduced from the inclination of the Federal Government and Governors on the matter that the Senate will also bring up the matter for legislation, the Majority Leader replied:

“Our view is to do what the people want. If the matter is brought before the Assembly, we will work hard to ensure that it is passed. But there are some who complain that governors will use state police to persecute their political opponents. Here, measures can be taken to ensure that the chance is not given to anyone.”

Mhmm. Do we need more than the supporting statements from the party, governors, presidency and now leadership of the National Assembly to understand where APC is heading to on this matter?

Some may argue that the President has expressed his disapproval to state police. I ask: how many times was he made to swallow his words on suggestions he feels strongly against? Remembering his acquiescence to Naira devaluation, fuel price increase and external loans leaves no room to doubt that he is just a lamb surrounded by wolves. More so, with the dismal performance he has registered so far and with his eye and that of his party now fixated on 2019, swallowing the restructuring bait becomes irresistible.

The restructuring bait, especially its state police portion, tempting as it is to politicians, is a poison that will shutdown the nervous system of the the Nigerian body. The three misgivings are real. We have been there before.

  

Discrimination

The first is fear of discrimination. To a person like me who lives and moves around the country for business and advocacy, the fear of ethnic persecution readily comes to mind. My Fulani/Muslim/Northerner identity makes me the most vulnerable in Nigeria today. I will face three levels of persecution. As a Fulani alone, some states will be no go areas for me, including Zamfara, Benue, Taraba and, one day, Plateau. 

State police will definitely be ready tools for executing ethnic cleansing plans of governors like Darius Ishaku, Jonah Jang and Samuel Ortom against citizens they harbour an inherent, insatiable hate. States like Plateau, Benue and Taraba will definitely be inhabitable to Muslims, where they are an oppressed minority in the first two and a suppressed majority in the third. The ethnic cleansing campaigns that we have seen in these states since 2001 attest to this fact. 

Just five days ago, Alhaji Saleh Bayari, former National Secretary of Mi Yetti Allah, reminded the nation at the All Fulani Groups Conference in Minna of how Governor Jang used elements in the Police to carryout an all out massacre of Muslims including babies and children in Kuru Karama in 2008. Before the Governor left office, not less than forty-two towns and villages in Plateau State were cleansed of their Muslim populations. Today, a pacifist Lalong is the Governor there and the killings have stopped. But the likelihood of other Jangs winning elections in the future is high. Also, allow Ortom of Benue State the power of state police and no Muslim will remain in Benue. Sure.

Beyond the three volatile northern states, Northerners in general may not find life easy in the south. From their utterances and practice, most southern intelligentsia and leaders exhibit unbridled hate for northerners. Remember Bola Ige (SAN), in spite of his education, was publicly inciting Nigerians against Fulani calling them Tutsis of Nigeria after the Rwandan genocide. And Ige was among the ‘finest’ that southern Nigeria could produce. Recently, Ben Nwabueze (SAN) has been equally hateful in speech. You will not be mistaken if you say hate speech is invented in southern Nigeria. It is there in the region’s mainstream media and social media as well, tonnes and tonnes of it is churned year in year out since 1957.

Nothing has driven northerners to Buhari as the possibility of relief from this persecution. This fear remains his support lever among us. Even under him, hundreds were killed in Ige recently not to mention the invented Farmer/Herdsmen crisis. Harassment of travelers, daily killings of northerners especially in Eastern Nigeria, extortion by gangs, vigilantes and state revenue officials and activities of organizations like OPC leave northerners with the fear that a stamp of approval for state police will further heighten their vulnerability in the south.

In the contrary, southerners do not have much to fear in the North because they have been shown a good degree of tolerance. They run their businesses without hindrance and I doubt if the situation will change. The North has been accommodating to everyone.

Political Persecution

The second is the fear of political persecution by incumbent governors as it happened during the First Republic. The persecution that NEPU and Tijjaniyya elements suffered in the hands of NPC in the defunct Northern Region is a sad commentary that no well meaning Nigerian would like to see repeated.

Contemporary governors in the country have not behaved better. They go to every length to buy the services of the Police in repressing their opponents. The recent shameful complicity of Kano State Commissioner of Police in preventing Senator Kwankwaso from visiting Kano testifies to this desire for tyranny among our governors. With a police gang under direct command of the governors, hell will be let loose on anyone that may oppose the governor or his policies.

Apart from opposition party politicians, even politicians of the ruling party, like the legislators who always like to cultivate parallel loyalties in states, will come under the direct fire of the governors. Absolute control is what governors crave for and acquiescing to the idea of state police feeds directly into their plan.

The same governors will have hell waiting for them after their tenures for it is the tradition of our governors to persecute their predecessors even where the latter were their benefactors. Space will not allow me cite so many examples here but Goje, Bafarawa, Muazu know what I am taking about. Suffice it to say that the present governors should know that what goes around will come around one day. For them, in fact, that day is near. They are digging their own graves.

Finally, with state police let us also forget about free and fair elections. These glorified gangs of criminals in the name state police will readily do everything to serve their masters and there cannot be a more patronizing duty for them than to arm-twist the election process and pollute its atmosphere with their coercive force.  INEC national elections will follow the format of our state electoral commission’s. 

Insecurity

Instead of reducing insecurity, state police will only increase crime in the states and aggravate corruption and poverty.

Experts have said that apart from Lagos State, no state can stand on its own financially. Add state policing to their destitution, governors who already can hardly pay salaries will superintendent a force that is underpaid and which as a result will resort to extortion of citizens and crime.

We already have a bad example in Benue State. The State owes its workers 11 months salary. The implementation plan of the anti-Fulani law there provides for the training of not less than 800 Livestock Guards in policing and handling of firearms. AK-47 rifles were supplied to not less than 700 of them with each guard promised a monthly salary of N15,000.

The salary promise, little as it looks for a person armed with AK-47 assault rifle, was not kept by Governor Ortom. So the Guards engaged in crimes like extortion of pastoralists, cattle rustling, kidnapping and ransacking villages in Benue and neighboring Taraba and Nasarawa States. When some of them were arrested last January at Arufi in Taraba State, they confessed to the military that the Benue State Governor owes them five months salary arrears. Only N15,000 per month, just $40 dollars! During the month, a kidnapped member of Taraba State House of Assembly was reported killed. The Guards are still on the loose, terrorizing citizens as they wish and out of control of the Governor.

The incumbent governors too can become hostage to the police gangs they will create. Governor Ortom is already one in the hands of the leader of the Guards, whom the Governor sacked after the January 1st incident but was forced by fear to reinstate recently. The Guards leader is a person who boasts of the capacity to determine Benue future elections! What can be more intimidating to Ortom than this? This is not to mention threats from his rival gang leader, Ghana, who is perpetrating mayhem in Benue villages for being sacked by the Governor as head of Internal Revenue Committee of three local governments in the state. He has vowed to continue his rampage unless he is reinstated. This is a classical personification of Mutanabbi’s thesis:

ومن يجعل اضرعام للصيد بأزه

   تصيده الضرغام فيما تصيدا

‏"Whoever makes the the lion his hunting bird will one day be a prey to the lion. 

‏So not only the Fulani pastoralists or

‏ Northerners but also ordinary Nigerian citizens have a rough ride ahead. A group of them especially should be worried: the civil servants, who would suffer the most. Why? Well, the governors will conveniently use security as an excuse for their theft and for not paying salaries. With monsters in the form of armed thugs that are glorified as State Police, nobody can counter their claim. After all it will be argued that security is the most fundamental responsibility of government. I have a painful example to cite here and it perfectly demonstrates what governors in Nigeria means by security.

By the time an audit was made of the ‘security’ expenditure of my state between 2007 and 2015, it was found that the Governor Yuguda has spent N102billion on that head. 😳 Bauchi State is not Borno, Yobe or Adamawa. Yet, the then governor found it expedient to ‘spend’ an average of N35million daily on security for eight years - daily, yes, daily, on the average. And he left office owing workers two months salary and a debt of over N80billion. In December 2014 he withdrew over N4billion OFR ‘security’ and N2billion in May 2015, according to documents signed by his  top official. 

This was a governor that reported his predecessor to EFCC for spending (what we may now term only) N5billion on security for eight years! The predecessor was only let off the hook on the matter when Yuguda’s scandalous expenditure during the first two years was shown to the then NSA in 2010 and Farida kept the file aside. Kai! That regime was fantastically corrupt. Yet, Yuguda is a free man in this era of change, not even subjected to the charge-and-bail charade of the administration.

If the above would happen to a state that received N935billion in eight years, what will happen if it is burdened with state policing under a tenure that earns a far lesser revenue?

Conclusion

I am sorry for this long essay and I have more regret for the condition Nigeria finds itself today where it is led by a government which against all hopes and promises has displayed unashamed degree of ineptitude. We all thought it would use the popular mandate that shove it to power for reforms that will especially secure the nation further. However, it has now shown that it will stop at nothing to perpetuate its tenure even if it means making the citizens less secure. This is bad. Very bad.

Members of the ruling party and their supporters, and those that may not feel our vulnerability, along with those that time without number have expressed their desire for the dissolution of the Nigerian nation or penchant for confederation, can all hail the APC for this move. While they continue to take the last steps toward achieving their goal, we will not relent in telling all citizens that state police will be a monster that will consume this democracy.

We believe that in a multiethnic developing nation like Nigeria it is better to work on the path of reforming the Nigeria Police by cleansing it of bad eggs and equipping it for 21st Century policing no matter what that will demand of will and resources. Anything short of this will be a recipe for disaster.

Therefore, the assurance of the Majority Leader that legislation on state police will be designed to avert these fears is as assuring as any other APC promise: Good for hoodwinking the masses at election but impossible for implementation: the Naira:dollar parity, N42/liter of petrol, N5,000 for each unemployed, functional refineries, stable electricity, single-tenure Presidency, internal democracy, smooth roads, better education, name it - all empty and in many cases worse than the PDP.

Well, 2019 will come and pass, with or without APC in power, but Nigerians will remain.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

14 February 2018

Benue Is Cutting Its Nose…

Today is the cattle market day in Makurdi, one of the biggest in Nigeria. The condition of the market is shown in the pictures attached. Empty. Only some few emancipated Cows can be seen gathered in two or three fence of the markets with no customers to buy.

Speaking to an anonymous cattle dealer in the market, he said the Tivs people in the state have started boycotting cow meat and resorting to pork and goat meat. If it were for health reasons, I would have said they are moving from bad to worse. What a fall! From cow to pig?

But the reason is economic: to stop their dependency on cattle and break the economic backbone of the Fulani after expelling them from the state. The decision may not achieve the desired result, however. It will affect the Tivs and cattle traders more than it will affect the pastoralists.

My source said vehicles transporting cattle on Federal Highways are also intercepted by Tivs to ensure the boycott is effective. Trucks destined to the East take alternative routes through other states.

The cattle business is among the highest revenue earners of local governments in the North. No other local business has the turnover of the cattle market in the region. Agricultural produce is a likely candidate but it is seasonal, making it only a distant second.

Local revenue is also collected on each cow sold in the market and every truckload is charged few thousand naira, officially and unofficially, by collectors. Many state afrigenes and other Nigerians in the state are also dependent on the cattle value chain directly or indirectly. Now all that is thrown away just for the sake of crippling a self-imposed enemy.

One would assume that this strategy may boost the production of goats and pigs in the state, making the Tivs wealthy. My experience tells me it is doubtful. Early in the Jos crisis, the Jos Central Market was destroyed by by an agenda to rid the state of Hausa “settlers”. Of course the traders who included other tribes from outside the state lost enormous wealth there overnight. But while they have since found their feet once more, the Governor failed woefully in his effort to encourage the “indigenes” to take up the challenge of replacing them in trade or farming. Mobilizing individuals on large to take up business is not easy. Clan Business is a culture that is established over generations.

Even a small measure can fail, if the cultural context is missing. When a governor was busy chasing Hausa and Fulani from communities of his state, he established for the state what could be considered a model dairy farm to provide alternative milk in collaboration with Israeli partners. Hundreds of hectares were cleared, Cows were imported from South Africa at the cost of N1 million each, modern agricultural equipment was imported and an entire ultra-modern dairy complex was built., etc. Five years after it took off and just three years after he left office, I was deeply saddened to see it fast becoming desolate. I was so moved that I could not snap a picture of its scene of blown off roofs, scanty and hungry looking cows and unkept environment. I could not because the scene called for sympathy. The milk from the farm has disappeared from the market since. I saw it coming but I was all the same touched to see it arrive.

The Tivs may not prove to be different. Eating cow meat has been their culture for ages. Politics cannot make them abandon it overnight. In fact, their penchant for cow meat has been the beginning of their troubles with pastoralist, not grazing land, before it is overtaken by ethnic cleansers. They consider cows wild animals and has been hunting them from herders for decades now. With deteriorating law enforcement, their attacks on cattle called for resistance from pastoralists who started to fight back in order to protect their wealth the way we fight armed robbers when they attack banks or homes for money. And hell was let loose. Why would pastoralist resist?

The Tivs can win the legal and propaganda battles because they have they have the Governor, House of Assembly, the State judiciary and the state treasury in an era of a complacent presidency. But they cannot win the economic goal of breaking the backbone of the Fulani. It is a culture of over 8,000 years in West Africa.

The Tivs abstention of cow beef will relapse back to its natural position. The difference would be as cows do not graze on Benue soil, they will be forced to buy beef imported from other states especially neighboring Nasarawa.

The crisis will end because the default setting of man is for peace. From Tafawa Balewa, to Plateau and Southern Kaduna, the experience is the same. Everybody becomes tired, including the government, and start to long and call for peace which eventually returns. They cannot continue burning their state, or sleep in the bush and IDP camps, or boycott meat, forever.

The day peace returns to Benue, the Tivs will welcome their long standing culture of meat consumption, and only then would they realize that in preventing them from eating or dealing in cows, Ortom misled them to cutting their nose in order to spite their face.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

1 February 2018

Stopping Ethnic Cleansing of Fulani in Benue

I drove across the entire length of Benue State in the past four days. I didn’t see, as far as my eyes could reach, a single cow grazing.

The entire land from Otukpo to Yelewata border in Nasarawa State has been burnt to ensure that no grazing takes place. It is black ash everywhere.

All Fulani pastoralists have been cleansed from the Benue State by the State Government except for some remnants in some four local government areas in Idoma dominated areas.

The State Government has for the purpose of cleansing the Fulani established a militia called Livestock Guards who perpetrate mayhem on innocent pastoralists with the main goal of chasing them out of the state. It bought the Guards assault rifles and dozens of 4WD vehicles, contrary to its denial.

Pastoral Resolve, PARE, has comprehensively documented the atrocities of the Livestock Guard in the last two months in a document it is publishing later this February. It carries the description of events, location, deaths of pastoralists and number of cattle killed or rustled by the Guards.

The Nigerian military and mobile police units sent to keep the peace have taken sides. They are imposing a blockade to ensure that no pastoralist returns. They do not arrest the armed, criminal Livestock Guards.

Not satisfied with its achievement of evicting the pastoralists, the state government has mounted a cross border campaign using the Livestock Guards to attack pastoralist herds in neighboring Nasarawa state and rustle their cattle. This morning, around 7am, herds were attacked near Kadarko by the people suspected to be members of Livestock Guards and local farmer populations. The pastoralists were killed and their cattle rustled.

There is an ongoing cross border campaign to arrest pastoralist leaders in Nasarawa State and ferry them to Makurdi where they are detained without being charged in court.

Thousands of cattle across the border in Nasarawa State are facing imminent starvation. In ten days time, they will run short of residue. Deaths will start. I have witnessed a sea of these desperate livestock at the bank of the Benue at Dooga, near Anyichi.

Recommendations:

Quickly,

1. If none else, Fulani leaders in Nigeria must rise to defend the poor, peasant pastoralists who have been driven out of their homes in Benue State and are currently persecuted by the Nigerian police and Livestock Guards.

2. The attention of the Federal Government and indeed the world must be drawn to these war crimes and a demand for stoppage and restitution made.

3. The Federal Government must immediately disarm the Livestock Guards and arrest its leaders for the heinous offenses they are committing.

4. The Federal Government through the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation must seek an perpetual injunction against the open-grazing law passed in Benue and Taraba States for its violation of fundamentals human rights of citizens.

5. The President must stop ignoring his responsibility of protecting the affected pastoralists whom he owes a constitutional responsibility to defend. He has never given them audience, not even on the day he summoned both parties for a reconciliation meeting, where he chose to meet with only Tiv leaders. No leader can be just by listening to one side only. Wherever I met them, the pastoralists are understandably and reasonably very bitter with the President on this.

6. Anything short of these measures will require the Federal Government to be charged before the ECOWAS court and ICC as an accomplice in the crime of ethnic cleansing against the affected pastoralists.

7. The governor of Benue State must be held responsible for ethnic cleansing and all crimes perpetrated by the Livestock Guards.

8. Lastly, the federal government should hasten to provide feed supplements and roughages to the starving cattle in Nasarawa State and aid to the displaced pastoralists. The gory pictures of dying cattle will tarnish the image of the country and the government before the world.

9. Should in case these pleas fall on deaf ears of the executive, the National Assembly should urgently investigate the matter and get the federal Government live up to its responsibilities.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

28 January 2018

Hattara Dai APC da Yan’arewa!

Jiya na karanta labarin cewa Kwamitin Sake Tsarin Zaman Nijeriya na jam’iyyar APC (APC Restructing Committee) wanda Mai Girma Gwamna El-rufa’i ya shugabanta ya mika rahotonsa ga Shugaban jam’iyyar, Mr Oyegun.

Kwamitin ya ba da shawarar a rikito da al’amurra goma daga dankin ikon Gwamnatin Tarayya a mai da su ga hannun jihohi. Cikin wadannan abubuwa har da batun yan’sanda da gidajen yari, da lasisin harkar maadinai da mai, da sauransu.

Hankalina ya tashi a kan lamurra uku da na lasafta amma dai zancen bai wa gomnoni ikon su kafa nasu rundunonin yan’sanda ya fi damuna don in an yi wannan mutane biyu su kwana da sanin za su sha ukuba a Nijeriya.

Kashi na farko sune yan’arewa da ke zaune a kudu da musulmin da ke zaune a jihohin Plateau, Benue da Taraba. Tabbas wadannan su shirya tattara komatsansu idan wannan shawarar ta APC ta samu karbuwa. Da ma yaya halin kura bare an bata tsaron garke? Yanzu ma yaya, balle a ce gwamnonin wuraren nan suna da yan’sanda masu dauke da makamai? Da ma majalisu nasu ne, haka ma’aikatun shariah a wadannan jihohin. Kawai an basu damar aikata ta’addanci: su yi doka kuma su zartar da ita.

Misali a nan shi ne irin yadda ake takurawa Hausawa a kudu, da bakin da suke zuwa can ci-rani ko sayayya. Legas ta yi kamari bisa wannan. Kungiyar OPC kawai za a yi wa rijista a matsayin yan’sanda su ci karensu ba babbaka. A zamanin Goodluck, mun ga yadda siddan kawai ake tsare Hausawa a Kudu-maso-Gabas da sunan yan’ta’adda ne su yi wata da watanni garkame kuma a kasa yin komi. Yau ba za a yi haka ba don shugaban kasa Bahaushe ne. Amma ko a karkashinsa, idan jahohin na da yan’sanda, shi ke nan, sai su fake da yancin yin doka da yan’sandan da suke da su su hanawa yan’arewa rawan gaban hantsi.

Irin wannan ya faru a jahar Benue kwanan nan. Na je na gani. Gwamnan ya kafa sansanonin horar da yan’ta’adda da yau yake amfani da su wajen korar Fulani. Kuma gwamnatin Buhari ta ba shi sojoji da yan’sanda da za su tabbatar korar ta wanzu don “a zauna lafiya.”

Wayyo Bahaushe! Kullum da barazana ake cinsa. Ba bafilatani mai kiwo yau a kasar Tibi, sai dai kasar Idoma. Duk an kore su sun dawo Jahar Nasarawa. Kaddara da Gwamnan Benue na da karfin yan’sanda, da abin zai fi haka muni. Yanzun ma ya cimma burinsa amma da taimakon Buhari.

Irin wannan ne su Dariye da Jang suka gagara aiwatarwa a Filato. Da suna da yan’sanda nasu na kansu, ko da akwai shugaban kasa da zai ba su sojoji da za su kare muradunsu don a zauna lafiya, da yau ba bahaushe ko bafilatani ko musulmi a Filato. Da Obasanjo ne, abinda ya faru a Benue da korar Filani da bai faru ba don yana da karfin hali da taratsin da zai iya takawa Ortom birki. Amma a wajen Buhari, sai mu ce kash, albasa ba ta yi halin ruwa ba.

To jama’a a yi hattara. Ina ganin kafa a dalilin Buhari da jam’iyyar APC su yi mulki a sha’afa ko a mika wuya bori ya hau kamar awaki in an mika musu dusa. Buhari zai gama mulkinsa watarana, amma kar a bari ya tafi ya bar mu muna da-na-sani. Wannan batun yan’sanda a jihohi matsala ce wacce duk jami’an tsaro sun ce zai haddasa fitina da danniya. Ko Obasanjo da Jonathan sun ki yarda da shi. Amma ga yadda lamurra ke tafiya, musamman abinda nake gani da idanu na yanzu haka a Benue, ni kam jikina ya yi sanyi matuka.

Sai kashi na biyu: yan hamayya za su dandana kudarsu idan gwamnoni suna da rundunonin yan’sanda nasu. Mun ga wannan zamanin su marigayi Sardauna. A samu sauran yan NEPUn da ke raye a sha labari. Ko wane mai mulki, in ba ya yi zalunci ba hankalinsa bai kwanciya, sai wanda Allah ya wa rahama. Ka ga idan gwamna na da majalisa, da yan’sanda, da kotuna, da gidan yari, shi ke nan, tuwo na mai na. Shi ya sa ka ga hatta gwamnoni Hausawa ke goyon bayan haka don burinsu na danniya ya cika.

Toh. Awakin Arewa an mika musu dusa, an ba su kuri’a a kasar yarbawa, nasu ya zama shugaban kasa. Yanzu kuwa lokaci ya yi da za a biya wa kura aniyarta. Wanda ya ci ladan kuturu, an ce, sai ya masa aski. Amma kuma Bahaushe, a kirarinsa ga k’uda, ya ce: kuda, wajen kwadayi a kan mutu.

Zan rufe wannan sharhi da nasihar babanmu, marigayi, Saadu Zungur, lokacin da yake jan kunnen yan’arewa kan kar su yarda da mulkin jamhuriyya da zai soke ikon sarakuna, ya ce:

Hakkin jama’a mu fada muku

Ku nadama ko ku yi dariya.

Dariyarku ta zam kuka gaba

Da nadamar mai kin gaskiya.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

27 January 2018

Benue crisis: IGP blames Ortom

The Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, yesterday accused the Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, of causing the lingering clashes between farmers and herdsmen in Benue and Nasarawa states. He spoke at a closed-door meeting with members of the joint Senate Committee on Police Affairs and National Security and Intelligence on the killings in Benue and environs when he appeared before the committee in response to the Senate’s summon.

The Senate had given the IGP a 14-day ultimatum to arrest and prosecute perpetrators of the killings in Benue. Following his inability to make the arrests and give updates on the issue, the Senate earlier this week summoned him to explain. At the beginning of yesterday’s meeting, the IGP tried to give brief details of his visit to the affected local governments in Benue. Journalists were then excused from the room as it held behind closed doors.

But sources at the meeting, said the IGP identified the implementation of the anti-open grazing law and the arming of Tiv militia as causes of the crisis. “Also worthy of mention is the public display of corpses, coupled with unguarded and inciting speeches by the Benue State governor before and during the mass burial of the victims of the crisis. These utterances renewed tension leading to youths of Tiv ethnic group unleashing violent attacks on residents of Makurdi.”

He however told the lawmakers that 145 suspects had been arrested, out of which 124 had been charged to court while 21 were still under investigation. Idris said the allegation by Governor Ortom that armed militia were being camped in Tunga, Awe Local Government Area of Nasarawa State to unleash mayhem on Benue people was untrue. “Because I visited Tunga during my assessment tour of the location,” he said.

Daily Trust gathered that the police boss, at the end of his presentation, recommended that Governor Ortom should re-visit the Anti-Open Grazing, and Establishment of Ranches Law of the state with the aim of providing ranches with gradual implementation. Idris also called for the re-establishment or re-identifying known cattle routes that hitherto existed.

He called for the immediate disbandment and disarming of the livestock guards, Shitile Tiv militias, and any other militia group in order to forestall prohibited firearms in the hands of unauthorized persons. Idris appealed to the state government, relevant stakeholders as well as the citizens to engage in dialogue for peaceful coexistence in the state.

At the opening session of the meeting, the chairman of the committee, Senator Abu Ibrahim(APC, Katsina) said it was sequel to the Senate resolution on the 14-day ultimatum given to the IGP to arrest the killers. Immediately after the opening session, Senator Ibrahim excused newsmen from the meeting, saying the report of their findings would be presented to the Senate on Tuesday.

The IGP at the opening session said he spent eight days in Benue, in line with the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari. Senators who attended the meeting include Shehu Sani, Emmanuel Paulker, Isa Hamma Misau, Suleiman Adokwe, Abdullahi Gumel and Umaru Kurfi. When Daily Trust contacted CSP Jimoh Moshood, the Force PRO said he could not comment, because he is not privy to the details of what happened at the closed-door meeting.

Daily Trust

3 February 2018

——

My Comment:

The truth is surfacing after it was buried by a hubris of propaganda and deceit by the Benue State Government and a section of the Press that made the Government House in Makurdi their ATM Machine. And one day, so would peace return to Benue.

The directive of the President for the IGP to relocate to Benue has started yielding results. But it is nothing if he does not follow it with action. He needs to seek a court injunction to stop the illegality of state legislation that violates the constitution and the militia that are wrecking havoc on innocent pastoralists.

We need to move forward. Tomorrow, we will write on Roadmap To Peace In Benue, isA.