A cursory look at the Southern Kaduna Killings

SOUTHERN Kaduna, in Kaduna State, has witnessed orgies of killings for almost three decades. Almost every year, some people armed themselves to the teeth with lethal weapons, including conventional rifles, machine guns and AK47 rifles, to horridly mow down innocent men, women and children. The women are tortured and raped; the pregnant ones among them have their stomachs ripped off and the embryos desecrated.

Buildings are razed to the ground and whole communities devastated.

There have been more questions than answers as to the whys and wherefores of the endless killings: ethnic cleansing, jihad/Islamisation, a continuation of the Shehu Usman dan Fodiye’s Fulani jihad of the early nineteenth century, a hidden agenda of the Fulani to dominate the region or what?

What irks this paper is that the killings in Southern Kaduna are predictable and the Governments, State and Federal, have done nothing to stop them, suggesting official connivance if not complicity in the violence against whole ethnic nationalities. For example, before the most recent carnage which reportedly claimed over eight hundred lives and destroyed hundreds of property, there was a government-imposed curfew in Zango Kataf, Kaura, Jema’a and Goska Council Areas. In spite of this the Fulani herdsmen felt free to attack and slaughter hundreds of innocent citizens on Christmas Eve to prevent the Christians from enjoying the festivities marking the birth of their Lord, Jesus Christ.

After the senseless killings, the security personnel, including the police and soldiers, like a fire brigade, rushed in to see how whole communities were decimated. Thereafter, the Inspector-General of Police was heard to say, as usual, that the number of the people killed was not up to 800, as though a smaller number is a plea for extenuating circumstances for ineffectiveness, inefficiency and a charge of conspiracy or of being in cahoots with the insensate killers!

We wonder why this show of shame should happen in Nigeria in the twenty-first century.

Many gnawing questions are begging for answers. They include, but are not limited to, how and why are the Fulani herdsmen able to acquire firearms, AK47 rifles, in particular, (costing no less than N300,000.00 apiece), and considering that there is an extant Firearms Act (Cap. 146, LFN, 1990), whose section 3 provides that:

“No person shall have in his possession or under his control any firearm of one of the categories specified in Part I of the Schedule hereto (hereinafter referred to a prohibited firearm) except in accordance with a licence granted by the President acting in his discretion,” and the penalty for contravention is ten years imprisonment?

The studied silence of the Head of State even after over 800 innocent people had been sent to their untimely graves is worrisome. A directive from the Head of State that the same security personnel who manned a failed curfew should do certain things is a belated instruction. We like to know why the President cannot visit the locus inquo and see things for himself. The killing of two police officers hundreds of kilometres from Washington the other day compelled the attention of President Obama, who promptly visited the spot where the policemen were killed, spoke at length to placate the people and condoled with the community and the police. The distance between Abuja and Southern Kaduna is less than one hundred kilometres! Only a few moths ago, over 300 Agatu people in Benue State were butchered like rams. Presidential silence laid the matter to rest!

As for the Governor of Kaduna State, it is difficult to understand his role in the scheme of things. Did he ever pay ransom to some Fulani herdsmen at any time? Does he, therefore, know all or at least some of the perpetrators of these dastardly acts? What is he doing or saying about the security personnel who manned the curfew in Southern Kaduna? Will the curfew become more effective after the gruesome murders to prevent retaliation? Do Southern Kaduna indigenes have any assurance that they have a government which, according to section 14 of the Nigerian Constitution 1999 (as amended) makes the welfare and security of the citizens its primary concern?
What are the Federal and Kaduna State Governments doing to put a permanent stop to the unending killings in Southern Kaduna and elsewhere in Nigeria, including Enugu, Delta Adamawa, etc.?

At the National Consultation on Physical Security and Stockpile Management (PSSM) in Abuja, organized by the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa (UNREC) and the Presidential Committee on Small Arms and Light Weapons (PRESCOM), it was revealed a short while ago that Nigeria hosts 350 million or 70 per cent of the 500 million illegal arms in West Africa! What is the Federal Government doing about this?

We are persuaded that the Federal Government should empanel a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to inquire into the December 24 2016 killings in Southern Kaduna, identify the culprits, who must be tried openly, and, if found guilty, given condign punishments under the law.