Human Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has decried what it described as the “federal government’s lips service” to the persistent killings of natives in Plateau State, saying that because the victims are neither Hausa nor Fulani.
HURIWA claimed that over 300 natives of Plateau State have so far been killed between December 24, 2023 till date allegedly by armed Fulani terrorists who are allegedly paid by herders seeking to take over the lurch rich agricultural landed assets of the natives of Plateau State.
A statement by Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator of HURIWA, also condemned what he described as the “conspiracy of silence of the northern governors and political elites” who stoutly protested the lynching to death of 16 suspected kidnappers from Kano that were mobbed in Uromi, Edo State by a crowd that mistook the ‘travelling HAUSA/FULANI hunters’ for kidnappers unleashing violence on an industrial scale in Edo State.
HURIWA said; “The hypocrisy of Northern Muslim political and military elites to the constant killings of mostly Christian natives of Plateau State is deeply troubling just as the normalisation of these intermittent killings by the security forces and the political authority in Abuja is highly hypocritical and paints a picture of a government that is on the same page with the armed killers unleashing devastating violence on Plateau State citizens.
“The fact is that even after the Plateau state governor made a categorical statement confirming the serial killings as genocide, everyone of the important military and civilian officials and officers in the current administration pretended like the governor was speaking in tongue.
“If it was the Kano state governor that made assertion that HAUSA/FULANIS of Kano state are victims of genocide, the entirety of the Service Chiefs and the National Assembly leadership including officials in the presidency would have adopted immediate and far-reaching mechanisms to get to the roots of the allegation.
“But because it is the Christian governor of the Christian state in the North that made the assertion, everyone is pretending to be deaf and dumb. This is injustice at a highly sophisticated and industrial scale,” it said.
HURIWA also carpeted the key functionaries of the central government for merely paying lips’ service to the blood lettings in Plateau State only because the victims are evidently not from the politically connected ethnicity.
In the words of HURIWA; “We know that if these persistent killings, going on in Plateau state and exacerbated since the Christmas Eve genocide of 2023, were to happen in Kastina, Kano or Adamawa, either the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, or the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu would have relocated to the crime scenes to lead the counter attack.
“But the victims dying in their tens are Christian from minority ethnic communities in the North, they are politically marginalised and even their complaints of genocide are looked down upon as the talk of some very few and powerless people who should be overlooked”.
HURIWA noted that the Plateau State Governor, Caleb Muftwang, had decried the attacks in some communities in his state, saying bandits have taken over 64 communities.
HURIWA also lamented that at least 40 people have been killed after armed men stormed Zike community in the Kwall district of Bassa Local Government Area, Plateau State.
It noted that the brutal assault began shortly after midnight on Monday, 14 April, and lasted nearly two hours, leaving dozens dead, homes in ruins, and survivors in mourning.
HURIWA said that Joseph Chudu Yonkpa, National Publicity Secretary of the Irigwe Youth Movement (IYM), a local youth organisation, confirmed the incident, saying that many of the injured are receiving treatment at the Jos University Teaching Hospital and other nearby medical facilities.
HURIWA therefore lambasted the Federal Government for not prioritising the security of the lives and property of the natives of Plateau State since December 2023.
