Nigeria Must Act Fast To Avoid Becoming Like Somalia – Mutfwang
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has urged President Bola Tinubu to rise up to the occasion and end persistent killings in different parts of the country.
The former lawmaker charged the President to bring the killers to justice if he is willing to end insecurity in the country.
Dogara made the statement in Jos, the Plateau State capital, yesterday, when he led some serving and former members of the House of Representatives to pay a condolence visit to the state government over the recent killing of about 155 persons in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi local councils.
Dogara, who was received by the Governor, Caleb Mutfwang, said that those responsible for the “genocide and orgy of violence are all out to end our ways of life and must be stopped.”
According to him, the perpetrators of the violence are “not just crazy but are very dangerous,” adding that “the truth is that they won’t just stop until we stop them.”
He stressed: “We must stop them. Who has the responsibility to stop them? It is the Commander-in-Chief, but previously they reduced themselves to mourners-in-chief instead.
“It means using whatever coercive security apparatus we have as a nation to locate where these perpetrators are, and their sponsors, wherever they are littered in the ungoverned spaces that we have in Nigeria; whether in Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto or in southern Kaduna or in the South; we must locate them and after locating them, the Commander-in-Chief must take justice to them or bring them to justice.
“The failure to either take justice to them or bring them to justice has always been the bane of the fight against terrorism and violence in Nigeria because it emboldens them. If they will kill on the Plateau and go scot-free, why won’t they kill in any other state in the North and in the South?
“Failure to act at that level is more or less an incentive for them to continue to deploy this unbridled violence on the people. So, my call, therefore, is for the President to rise up and for him to know that condolences at this moment, whether on the Plateau or elsewhere in the country, are better given in the form of decisive action against the perpetrators of these violence and not by mere words.”
Muftwan thanked Dogara for always identifying with Plateau State, urging him not to be silent but to keep pushing for the interest of the people.
“There is a deliberate orchestrated plan to cause mayhem so as to discomfit us. We may be knocked down, but we are not knocked out. Our spirits are not broken. God has placed us where we are, and He will preserve us,” he said.
He regretted that killings have continued unabated on the Plateau for years, noting that Nigeria risks becoming like Somalia.
“It is unfortunate that this circle has continued for years. We are praying that as a nation we will get it right so that we follow the path of justice and not allow people to slip into self-help because once we allow the people to go into self help, we will become another Somalia.
“I think I can with all boldness say that I see a desire for a shift with the current President. I see a desire to change the narratives, to rewrite the story and get things right. I have interacted with him a couple of times, and I think he carries a burden to end this violence. What we need is a mass of critical leaders to rally round him to be able to expand his scope so that he understands the root and immediate causes of these problems and proffer solutions.
“There is an economy that has been built around this insecurity. We need to know who the financiers are and who paid for the hundreds of AK47 rifles. Where did they get them from?” the governor added.
Mutfwang also reiterated the commitment of his administration in collaboration with the Federal Government to bring an end to the carnage and decades of attacks that have claimed several lives in Plateau State.
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