A regional group, The Middle Belt Forum, has alleged that the federal government and the security agencies are aware of the hideout of marauders who invade communities in the region but have failed to act.
The regional group called for the destruction of Mahanga Forest from where terrorists unleash mayhem on the states of Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Southern Kaduna.
National president of the Middle Belt Forum, Dr Bitrus Pogu, also told LEADERSHIP Friday that the increasing killings in the region over the years are a grand design of ethnic cleansing by the northern oligarchy to dispossess the nationalities of the region of their ancestral lands, adding that the invaders were renaming communities after attacking their inhabitants.
The regional group also called on the governors in the area to rise to the challenge of containing the marauders, even as it insisted that the security agencies know the hideouts from where they come to terrorise the areas.
According to Pogu, the hideout from where these terrorists launch their attacks on the states of Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Southern Kaduna has been known to government and security forces for decades, yet they have deliberately allowed the place to remain, thus providing a safe haven for the terrorists to smuggle arms, train their mercenaries and unleash violence on innocent citizens at will.
He criticized government for failing in its primary duty of catering for the security and welfare of the people, as mandated by Section 14(b) of Nigerian’s 1999 constitution.
“Conversely, the unrelenting massacre of our people in the Middle Belt States, particularly recently on the Plateau has shown without any vestige of pessimism that the government and security forces are complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous ethnic nationalities who are not part of the Sokoto Caliphate.
“It is no longer news that the hideout from which these insurgents/terrorists launch their attacks on the states of Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Southern Kaduna is known to government and security forces for decades yet they have deliberately fortified this evil theatre from any destruction thus providing a safe haven for these terrorists to smuggle arms, train their mercenaries and unleash unimaginable terror on innocent citizens without any provocation whatsoever.
“Mahanga, a forest which lies at the foot of the hills of Bokkos local government area of Plateau State and borders Wamba L.G.A of Nasarawa State to the south, is the infamous launching gro`und of all attacks against our people in the last two dec ades and fully known to government and security forces,” Pogu said.
According to him, the government and security forces have shielded the autonomous Fulani community which is known to harbor all manner of weapons, including missiles that are used to destabilise the peaceful coexistence of the country without ever invading and uprooting them from the forest.
“This same tactic of nurturing and fortifying terrorist camps finds expression in the Mandara Hills in Borno and Alagarno where the military moved the entire residents of over 11,000 people from Sabon Gari, leaving the whole road between Biu and Dambua for the terrorists to operate freely, even collecting tolls on the highway. This implicates the government of collusion with these armed non-state actors to kill and maim our people with the intent to eclipse our heritage and existence,” he stated.
Pogu, however, vowed that the people of the area were ready to confront head-on the “abysmal and surreptitious extinction of our people” and liberate the Middle Belt States from the oppressive and tyrannical manipulations of external forces that have retarded development in the region.
“We shall take the bull by the horn to defend our people as the last option left to us predicated on our land, our people and our heritage.
“It is pertinent to note that the divide and rule tactic over the years employed by our adversaries have accounted for the political subjugation of our people,thereby limiting our access to economic power which concomitantly render us vulnerable and defenceless in the face of carefully orchestrated stratagems to eclipse our heritage and continued survival,” he said.
The Middle Belt Forum further lamented the plight of ethnic nationalities in the states of Nasarawa, Gombe, Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Kebbi, Bauchi, Kaduna, Niger, Kwara, Taraba, Benue, Plateau, Kogi and Abuja (FCT), “who are daily butchered like chickens.”
The regional group noted that the relentless killings are symptomatic of the northern oligarchy’s treatment of indigenous people of the Middle Belt as lesser humans without dignity and worth.
Pogu declared that the people of the region “shall never again accept the ignoble and inferior status imposed on their people by the caliphate and Nigerian government acting in connivance with security forces to drive us out of our ancestral homeland.
