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The
Peoples Progressive Party views with increasing alarm the
continuing vacillation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s
government as communities after communities across the
country are pillaged, raped, and slaughtered at will by
rampaging, gun-throttling Fulani Herdsmen; people that would
otherwise listen to the President if only he can show the
will to call them to order.
In
the recent weeks, the nation has been mortified by stories
of free-willing armed gangs numbering in their many hundreds
descending, in very deadly ways, on Agatu community of Benue
State and Ukpabi Nimbo community of Benue State; yet the
Presidency and the security forces fiddle, seemingly
confused as to their loyalties; whether it be to the Fulani
Herds gangsters or to the peace loving and unarmed
communities.
The
most troubling aspect of this saga is the fact, now
emerging, that the Presidency and the security forces were
forewarned prior to the mayhem unleashed upon the Ukpabi
Nimbo community in Enugu State. We hear that the President
could not even find time to take the frantic calls of the
Governor of Enugu State immediately leading to the assault
on the villagers. The President’s security chiefs also
refused all pleas to deploy to deter the attack. In other
words, the President was grossly derelict in his most
fundamental constitutional responsibility to guard and
protect the lives and properties of Nigerians. This is what
we pay him to do and he has failed the nation miserably.
There
is no matter as urgent in the country today as these
incessant massacres of communities after communities by
Fulani Herdsmen; yet the President fiddles, diddles,
quibbles, vacillates, and procrastinates on the matter; one
with fairly unambiguous solution - to order the security
forces to bring the cattle owners, gangster herdsmen, and
their leaders to the law. This is what we pay them for, is
it not?
The
seeming inability of the Presidency to act on these matters
or even utter routine statements of condemnation makes us
wonder if they are simply inept or, worse still, complicit.
At
PPP, we believe that every community ought to have the
ability to police its own territory, which is why we
continue to call for local political authority and local
policing authority for our various communities. In Nigeria,
the Federal Government has always shown the tendency to be
unresponsive and non-proactive to the needs of our
communities and the teaming masses. In matters of life and
death, the consequences of an unresponsive and non-proactive
government are irredeemable. This is why the masses must be
given the right to police their communities and the
political authority to sustain it.
We
believe the role of Federal Police authorities in the
communities should be complementary to their self-secured
state. They should not be the only security available. If
the communities of Agatu, Ukpabi Nimbo, and many others that
are under perennial attacks by armed gangs and daredevils
had the benefit of self security, the threat would be much
reduced; and the role of the Federal Government becomes the
last resort.
PPP
calls on the President and the National Assembly to
immediately commence the process of empowering our abandoned
communities and masses nationwide with the legal instruments
to police their own territories. Failure to do this would
ultimately result to uncoordinated community policing
outfits, as the people will, in the long run, ensure their
own protection with or without the government; with or
without the law. It has become a matter of life or death.
Signed:
Dr. Damian Uzoma Ogbonna
National Chairman |
