PMB Condemns Killings In Southern Kaduna Communities
BY VICTOR BUORO, ABUJA – President Muhammadu Buhari has said that violence cannot be the solution to persistent conflicts as long as people resort to deliberate provocations, revenge and counter revenge.
This is just as he said that no responsible leader would go to bed happy to see his citizens savagely killing one another on account of ethnic and religious bigotry.
President Buhari, who was reacting to the endless carnage in Kaduna State, urged the actors in the communal and persistent violence in Kaduna State to come to terms with the fact that mutual violence has no winners, but losers on both sides of the conflict.
In a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, President Buhari said; “I am deeply troubled by the fact that sanctity of life is now treated with such reckless disregard that people derive joy in shedding the blood of others or perceived enemies.
“Inhumanity has replaced compassion in the hearts and minds of the perpetrators of these atrocities.
“While the government remains committed to protecting its citizens, the communities involved must also put their shoulder to the wheel in order to find a lasting solution.”
The president noted that “lack of cooperation by those involved might frustrate government’s efforts towards finding a lasting solution, especially if those efforts are politicised.
He further said; “If the people resist government’s efforts to hold the perpetrators and their sponsors accountable, it would be very difficult to bring the violence to a permanent end.
“Everything is politicised in Nigeria, including the efforts to bring offenders to justice, because their people will rise up in arms to resist their arrests and prosecution.”
He described hate, bigotry and prejudice as “deadly poisons that have infected the human psyche on such scale that people now don’t have any moral inhibitions about taking life.”
The President appealed to the warring communities to stop inhibiting the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA’s) efforts to deliver food, medicines and temporary shelter to the victims of the violence who are in urgent need of assistance.
