Southern Kaduna carnage and conspiracy of silence

It is no longer news that the gross human rights violation in Nigeria is showing no sign of abating. At the risk of sounding like a prophet of doom; the unprovoked attacks and senseless killings of defenseless citizens by ‘suspected‘ gunmen is on the rise. Most worrisome is the recent war declared on the people of Southern Kaduna State by some supposedly ‘faceless‘ Fulani militia. KENNETH DAKOP writes that what is most appalling about the Kaduna debacle is the seeming conspiracy of silence from the authorities to put a halt to massacre.
WHAT started like a skirmish in Godogodo, a hitherto busy town along the Jos-Kaduna-Abuja highway, sometime last year has now grown in leaps and bounds leaving on its trail anguish, sorrow, tears and blood. The untamed wildfire kindled by deep seeded animosity amongst the people of the area for God-knows-how-long now has been further fueled by the blood of those caught in the web.
Quite a number of theories have been propounded and postulated concerning the killings in Southern Kaduna. Notwithstanding, however, the inter-play of ‘bad‘ politics mixed with a lethal dose of manipulation of religion for selfish ends by state actors can hardly be divorced from the crisis. Crime and criminality could be described as another hypothesis for the disturbances when viewed through a different prism. But from a wider perspective, the siege on Southern Kaduna bore all the features of a Siamese twin to that of Plateau and Benue states.
Not many people will agree that the incessant attacks on villages and communities on the so-called North Central Nigeria as we know it today by Fulani herdsmen is a fallout of cattle rustling or reprisal for wrong done the herders in the past by the locals as the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai would want us to believe. Tracing the pattern of unprovoked attacks in the Middle Belt region will tell a tale of more than just the deliberate sacking of communities known to be naturally endowed with rich vegetation and arable land as it is a carefully orchestrated subjugation of the minority groups. Going a step further, deliberate annihilation of Christians and destruction of their places of worship suggests a more sinister plot to wipe out Christianity and cultural identities of nationalities in the affected areas. Well, one may stand corrected in this wise.
Yet again, not many will concur that the government particularly the federal government does not have the solution to the persistent bloodletting in Kafanchan, Ninte, Goska, Godogodo and environs. But the criminal negligence to tackle the bloodletting head on by the Federal and Kaduna State governments have scaled up the level of impunity in Southern Kaduna.
As expected, the conspiracy of silence by President Muhammadu Buhari and Nasir El-Rufai concerning the pogrom attracted series of criticisms from a broad spectrum of the society especially the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN. Chairman of CAN in the South East, Most Rev. Prof. David Eberechukwu and Dr. Joseph Aka Ajujungwa representing the seventeen southern states of Nigeria were emphatic in their condemnation of the carnage and particularly laid the blame for the killings on the door steps of the governor of Kaduna for allowing it to go on for this long. By implication, the umbrella body for Christians in the country is holding the governor responsible for the crisis.
Apart from the religious leaders, other political leaders have also fingered El-Rufai and Buhari of complicity in the violence. Their silence or poor handling of the situation has fueled suggestions from political and religious leaders that the President and the Governor who are of the Fulani extraction are siding with the marauding Fulani warlords to unleash mayhem on the Christian dominated part of Kaduna State.
The question then arise as to the gravity of this allegation: what does President Buhari and Governor El-Rufai stand to gain by promoting the violence? Are their willing accomplices from within or outside Nigeria? And why is the governor using huge sums of tax payers’ money to pay compensation to the aggressors? What becomes of the plight of the victims of this madness who are the aboriginal peoples of Southern Kaduna?
Well, with the benefit of hindsight, the perennial crisis in that area dates back a long time in history and; to say that the recent violence is not an off-shoot of a long nursed ambition of the total islamization of that region by the Hausa and Fulani jihadists is to live in absolute self-denial. After all, the pattern of carefully planned attacks in Southern Kaduna and, one dares say, those in Agatu in Benue State, Donga in Taraba and some parts of Plateau speaks volume of this clandestine agenda.
Perhaps, what El-Rufai failed to tell Nigerians and especially men of good conscience is how much he is using from state funds (part of which belongs to the people of Southern Kaduna) to doll out as compensation to the attackers and killers of his people. All we are told is that the present government is revisiting the recommendations of a committee set up by former governor Patrick Yakowa that investigated the 2011 post-election violence in that part of the state.
The Southern Kaduna Peoples Union, SOKAPU, and Nigerians made demands to know the identity of the Fulani herdsmen to whom compensation or ransom was being paid by the government and the amount involved but the overtures met with a brick wall.
What one finds curious in this arrangement is that the government finds it convenient to ‘hastily‘ pay compensation to those they claimed lost cattle during the violence which after all was not only in Southern Kaduna or Kaduna State for that matter but virtually all the states in North. Yet again, it is convenient for the Kaduna State government to advance such reasons behind the compensation in her bid to hoodwink that part of the general public that is gullible into believing that it was a Christian governor who recommended the state action. Be that as it may, what then happens to the thousands who lost loved ones, their limbs, sources of livelihood and dislocation from their ancestral homes as a result of the 2011 violence? Don’t they deserve some form of respite from the state government for their loss? “What is meat for the goose, “ goes that old cliché, “should also be meat for the gander. “
A similar pathetic situation is playing out in Taraba State where Darius Ishaku, the governor of the state came out to advise his people not to fold their arms and allow Fulani terrorists to overrun them. Guess what happened next? It was the lone voice of leaders of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN in that state who shouted foul even when there was no reaction from them when their kith and kin were unleashing havoc on innocent citizens of the state. Ditto what is unfolding in Niger State and other Christian dominated areas in Central Nigeria.
When on August 16, 2016 one Dr. Haruna Usman made statements that the sacking of Ninte and other surrounding villages in Southern Kaduna by Fulani militia was in response to the killing of an ardo in Ninte, the security operatives chose to look the other way even where such remarks were incriminating.
As if that was not enough evidence for the security forces to swoop in on these perpetrators and their sponsors, on November 7, 2016 another set of rather dare devil individuals under aegis of Jema‘a Foundation, MACBAN and Mobgal Fulbe Foundation Development Association bewildered people of good conscience by the content of the message of their press conference in Kaduna.
At that conference, the representatives of the Hausa and Fulani nations did little to absolve their ilk from the mayhem. If for anything, their grandstanding and comments, albeit unequivocally, affirmed that the Hausa and Fulani Muslims are behind the ethnic cleansing and destruction of villages and places of worship in Southern Kaduna.
If you thought that bold showing by those merchants of death stopped at that conference then wait until you hear this: Again on December 31, 2016, just when the world was preparing to usher in a new year, the National Secretary of MACBAN also echoed the same position earlier canvassed by their co-travelers.
Against the background of these developments, one would have thought that these set of persons would have been cooling their heels with the security operatives but the opposite is the case. One wonders what more evidence is needed by the appropriate authorities to kick start the wheel of prosecution against those responsible for turning that part of Kaduna into a killing fields. The choice of the police and the judicial system not to institute an action against the chieftains of MACBAN and their collaborators leaves much to be desired.
And so armed with these evidences, the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, responded swiftly to remind the world and especially the security operatives to live up to their constitutional obligations. But even the reaction from CAN came only after the Council of Imams and Ulamas in Kaduna State issued a statement calling for the arrest of Rev. Dr. Samson Ayokunle, the President of CAN. Ignominiously, the Imams and Ulamas also called for the arrest of Senator Danjuma Laah, Senator representing Southern Kaduna, Dr. Solomon Musa, Rev. Zechariah Gado, Hon. Sunday Marshal and Secretary General of CAN, Rev. Dr. Musa Asake. The ‘sins‘ of the aforementioned personalities, according to the council, was that they dared to call a spade by its name.
On the other hand, CAN accused the Imams and Ulamas, and rightly so too, of being hypocritical in its call for the arrests of CAN leaders for what they described as ‘inciting and inflammatory comments on the Southern Kaduna issue. ‘
The Christian body did not mince words when they pointed out that ‘since May last year to date in Southern Kaduna alone, over one hundred Christians have been killed; over fifty three communities with their churches have been destroyed and not less than sixteen villages have been conquered and are now being occupied by Fulani herdsmen terrorists.‘
While the accusations and counter-accusations were going on, a bit of respite for the people of Southern Kaduna may be in the offing and probably, the world will come to know the true position of situation. This is so because an earlier petition sent to the office of the United Nations, UN, by Socio-Economic Rights and accountability Project, SERAP, got the attention of the international body. A memo sent to SERAP last Wednesday by Dr. Agnes Callarmard, Special Rapportuer of the UN on Extra-Judicial or Arbitrary Execution, in response to the petition sent on December 30, 2016, said the UN had indicated interest in the issue and would investigate it.
CAN, the umbrella body of Christians in Nigeria welcomed the decision of the UN, more so that Callamard possess vast experience in human rights investigation on behalf of the UN in approximately, thirty countries around the world. The prayer is that she will translate her wealth of experience in other areas into unraveling those behind the massacre.
Interestingly, both the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai and Inspector General of Police, IGP, Ibrahim Idris said Special Forces of the army were already in Southern Kaduna even as Idris disclosed the intention of government to establish a unit of Mobile Police force in Kafanchan to check the incessant arm conflicts in that area.
Like the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo said at a forum in Abuja last Thursday, there are elites who are benefiting from these crises, but then one is tempted to ask: why is the government unwilling to unmask these individuals? Are they sacred cows that cannot be touched? One fails to comprehend how this conspiracy of silence from the authorities will help heal wounds inflicted on the psyche of Nigerians by these senseless and mindless acts of violence over the years. This, indeed, calls for a rethink from each and sundryDON'T FORGET TO ALWAYS DROP YOUR COMMENT(S) AND SUGGESTION(S) IN THE COMMENT BOX BELOW. THANKS FOR VISITING. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER https://twitter.com/jtownonline