EDDY OCHIGBO, Kaduna
The Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU) has expressed dismay over the position of the Presidency that ‘the problem of insecurity in Southern Kaduna is more complicated as many people are willing to admit, dismissing it as a cheap propaganda in favour of what it called ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the good people of Southern Kaduna.
A press release yesterday, signed by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Malam Garba Shehu, maintained that “from available records, Southern Kaduna enjoys comprehensive security deployments, including the Army, Special Forces of both the Army and the Air Force, surveillance aircraft by the Air Force and mobile police units that are on the ground on a 24-hour basis to forestall criminality and keep the peace” , yet bandits and unknown gunmen are reportedly on the prowl maiming, killing and kidnapping innocent souls, especially women and children on daily basis.
While reacting to the position of the presidency on Southern Kaduna crisis, the National Spokesman of SOKAPU, Mr Luka Binniyat, told NATIONAL ACCORD in Kaduna that “Garba Shehu is deliberately being economical with the truth because the true position is that our people are being massacred on daily basis. So his claim that both the Army and Air Force have comprehensively been deployed to Southern Kaduna leaves much to be desired.
“As I speak to you funerals are being held in the killing fields of Southern Kaduna. In the past 48 hours, no fewer than 42 innocent souls across 4 local government areas, have fallen prey to unknown gunmen and bandits, Binniyat revealed, reasoning that “since the federal government see the Southern Kaduna killings as ethno-religious and has turned a blind eye, in spite of the bloodletting going on, SOKAPU is calling on the international community and good-spirited people globally, to put pressure on the federal government to intervene without further delay”.
A member of the Civil Society, Mr Dangwa Abbas Danjuma believes that both the state and governments are complicit in the Southern Kaduna crisis. “It is unfortunate that the government has always claimed that what is going in Southern Kaduna is reparisal attacks. Even if it is so, why would they make it look as if it is being permitted, Danjuma volunteered, calling on the authorities to urgently find last solutions to the avoidable killings.
On his part, Nasiru Jagaba, former SOKAPU youth leader who is currently a leading member of Middle Belt Youth Forum, told our Correspondent that the ongoing daily killings in Southern Kaduna is beyond what Malam Garba Shehu described as politically motivated “because from the look of things we now understand that the deployment of Army and Air Force Special forces on ground are either asleep or not living to their responsibilities or there is something fishy”.
“We can now understand why the government keeps changing narratives. They call the attacks in Southern Kaduna and Middle Belt communities herder/farmer crisis, while the attacks in Birnin Gwari, Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto are referred to as banditry and terrorism”, Jagaba explained.
Leave a Reply