The conference of minority tribes in Nigeria has demanded that the federal government take decisive action against the Fulani crisis in Benue State and all other religious-related issues across the country.
In a peaceful protest in Makurdi, the group condemned the wanton killings in Agatu and all other parts of the state even as they debunked claim that the crisis is purely over grazing rights.
Addressing the protesters, leader of the group, Comrade Okpokwu Ogenyi, demanded that the federal government institutes a probe into the killings and the reason why the herdsmen were allowed to traverse freely with sophisticated weapons as against the law.
While also lamenting the scale of destruction witnessed, Comrade Ogenyi described the current crisis as an ethnic cleansing exercise labelled Fulani-Agatu crisis to desensitise national consciousness.
“The on-going ethnic cleansing has been mischievously labelled Fulani-Agatu crisis under circumstances that are at best efforts to desensitise the national consciousness to the enormity of the scale on which Benue State people are being wiped-out on a daily basis”, Okpokwu stated.
The group which accused the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) of instigating violence in the region as part of its campaign of proliferation, demanded that the government must come out with a definite policy to curtail extremism.
“Individuals fingered in the Shiite crisis and those threatening the state as clearly seen in the published videos must be arrested and prosecuted. Government must then come out with a definite policy to curtail any form of extremism”, he emphasized.
Meanwhile, the group has also requested the federal government to provide compensation and relief to the victims of the invasion so as to alleviate their hardship.
Eze Afrika
