The Northern States Governors’ Forum was on Tuesday condemned over its silence on the killings, which took place in Southern Kaduna a few hours before it met in Kaduna State on Monday, Punch reports.
Groups, including the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Middle Belt Forum, and civil rights organizations, described the forum’s silence on the killings in Kaduna State as insensitive.
The organizations said this as the death toll in the bandits’ attack on Southern Kaduna increased to 51 on Tuesday with the recovery of three more corpses.
The NSGF had in a communiqué issued after at its meeting on Monday berated southern governors for insisting that the presidency should shift to the South in 2023.
The northern governors also faulted moves by Lagos and Rivers states to collect the Value Added Tax.
Between Sunday and Monday, no fewer than 48 people were killed by bandits in Zango Kataf and Kaura local government areas of Kaduna State within 24 hours of unrestricted bloody violence.
Commenting on the governors communiqué’s silence on the killings and their preoccupation with the 2023 presidency and the Value Added Tax, the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union spokesman, Luka Binniyat, carpeted the governors, saying they were “still in yoke with the obsolete mentality of one North.”
He specifically knocked the governors from the Middle Belt whom he described as “mere pawns to be used to further the interest of the core North.”
He also condemned the role played by the Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong.
“He (Lalong) seems to carry his curious role as Chairman of the NSGF not caring whether he is being used or not. He does not seem to bother about the opinion of our Plateau neighbors who are openly embarrassed and miffed by his poster face of anti-Middle Belt and Southern Nigeria.
“Southern Kaduna and Plateau State do not only share a very wide physical boundary, but we have also had centuries of inter-communal relationship and share almost the same problems of insecurity and mass murder of our people. Yet he did not have the courage of calling the attention of his colleagues to the ongoing genocide that took place less than 24hours before their meeting.”
Also berating the northern governors, the Middle Belt Forum described their opposition to power shift as selfish.
The National President of the Middle Belt Forum, Dr. Bitrus Pogu, said: “Before, it was only Boko Haram in the North-East and a few other places, But today, insecurity has covered the whole country with additional problems of banditry and kidnapping and a lot of people are being killed like rats on a daily basis under the watch of a northern government.”
The apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, said that if retaining Presidency was a panacea to people’s problems, the North would have become the Netherlands of Africa.
Ohanaeze Publicity Secretary Chief Alex Ogbonnia said the North had produced Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Shehu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalam Abubakar, Musa Yar’Adua, and Muhammadu Buhari, yet its problems were on the increase.
He stated, “It is most regrettable that the Northern leaders are undisturbed that Nigeria is fast collapsing under their leadership. The forum fails to recognize that at the moment, Nigeria is confronted with the most precarious omens full of uncertainty, doubts, insecurity, and bloodshed.
“Several schools in the North cannot open because of kidnappers and millions of children are on the street as beggars. The Nigerian currency has lost its value. Unemployment has skyrocketed, and Nigeria has become the poverty capital of the world and the northern governors, the Sultan, and the Emirs instead of seeking solutions to Nigerian problems were busy strategizing on how to retain power in 2023. This is most unconscionable, to say the least.”
The pan-northern organization, the Arewa Consultative Forum, through its National Publicity Secretary, Emmanuel Yawe, said that the northern body never supported the killing of innocent souls.
He said: “We have never supported the killing of innocent people anywhere in the world. We condemn this in all its ramifications. Human life is a gift from God. It is sacred and nobody has the right to take another man’s life on the basis of politics, religion, region, or ethnicity. This is the stand of ACF, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”
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