The atmosphere in the main hall of
the State House Kaduna that Tuesday was that of an uneasy calm.
Reason? Traditional rulers,
socio-cultural groups and community leaders from Southern Kaduna and
their Fulani counterparts were seated in the hall awaiting the arrival of the
Committee on Peace and Security led by Deputy Inspector General of Police,
DIGP, Michael Zoukumor.
The Committee was set up to douse
the animosity between the feuding groups following series of gory encounters
that left in their trail the loss of several lives and property in the
affected communities.
From all indications, it appeared
that the Committee had given the two warring camps a few hours notice to
converge for the meeting. Vanguard Features, VF, gathered that many of
those in attendance did not have an inkling of what the agenda would be.
But after about three hours of
waiting and with no assurance of when the committee members would arrive, some
prominent indigenes of Southern Kaduna, including their traditional rulers,
decided to leave the venue. They argued that it would be risky to travel late
in the night.
When members of the Committee
eventually arrived, DIG Zoukumor apologised profusely for coming rather late.
But by this time, only a handful of those who came from Southern Kaduna were
still in the hall.
A document was soon produced
for deliberations on a “ceasefire”. The document also contained
recommendations on ways of achieving an enduring peace between the two camps.
Dr. Ephraim Goje, President of the
Southern Kaduna Peoples Union, SOKAPU, led the Southern Kaduna delegates, while
Alh. Ahmadu Suleiman, Chairman of Mayyeti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of
Nigeria, MACBAN, Kaduna State chapter, led the Fulani groups.
When news of the peace move filtered
into Southern Kaduna, many of the indigenes rebuffed it as an unpopular
venture.
As the two groups reconvened the
next day at the same venue to continue the deliberations, a coalition of seven
Southern Kaduna groups, including the powerful youth wing of
SOKAPU, convened a press conference to reject the Zoukumor- brokered peace
agreement.
The Coalition which was led by
Zakari Sokfa, a lawyer and former Kaduna State Commissioner of Justice,
included the leader of Southern Kaduna Tribal Development
Associations, Dr. Bonnat Zwahu; Southern Kaduna Lawyer’s Association,
co-chaired by Messrs Francis Kozah and Reuben James.
The Gurara Forum which has almost
10,000 online face-book members and
prides itself as “Southern Kaduna 24
hour online- parliament”, was at the press conference. Also in attendance
were Southern Kaduna Women Forum and Southern Kaduna Farmers Association.
They all came to express their
resentment over the initiative of Zoukumor. They questioned the propriety
of the agreement, arguing that native communities of Southern
Kaduna that had come under the siege of alleged Fulani herdsmen, did not
provoke the Fulani, and that it would be unfair to treat the two sides as
having equal blames for the violence.
They went further to say that any
Fulani man that could come out openly to represent the herdsmen, knows who the
killers are, and should be apprehended for questioning and prosecution.
“We are aware of the meeting
yesterday; that meeting dragged on because people waited and waited and the
meeting did not take place.
The key stakeholders – the
traditional rulers, our community leaders waited and were all humiliated after
waiting for three hours. So they left. And somebody would now come up and say
they held a meeting. And that SOKAPU president was there, and the Fulani were
there.
“Are they telling us that the Fulani
that were there, who purportedly signed a cease fire, have agreed that they are
the ones that have been killing our people?
Those Fulani that signed the
agreement, are they the ones killing our people? If they agree that they are
the ones killing our people, did they explain why they are doing so? Because we
never attacked them,” Bonnat said.
“ Government says ‘warring’
parties. That is not true! There is nothing like warring
parties. We are not at war with the Fulani. The Fulani are at war
with us.
Therefore the questions of signing
any ‘ceasefire’ does not arise. It is just another round of politics as
far as we are concerned. You don’t call a whole community of people and their
respectable, first class chiefs to a meeting and keep them for hours, you
frustrate them and they had to leave.
If anybody says he has signed a
peace document, in as much as we crave and insist on peace, we don’t believe in
what they signed.
Now, if the Fulani that purportedly
signed such a document agreed that they have been attacking our people, then we
demand that government should start taking legal proceedings immediately
by arresting and prosecuting those that massacred our defenseless men,
women, and children in their hundreds.
Where was the DIG when they were
killing our people? So this issue is beyond anybody coming to Kaduna and
getting people to sign a document to say that we have achieved peace in Kaduna.
We are still feeling very vulnerable, and this has not given us any assurance
for our safety,” he added.
Recalling past incidents, the
coalition leader, Mr. Sokfa, said: “While we note that since the early 1980s
there have been sporadic attacks on the peoples of Southern Kaduna, the present
state of generalised warfare and genocidal attacks intensified from 2011 following
the presidential elections that engulfed about 10 Northern states.
“The main characteristic of the
on-going assaults on our communities is that they are carefully planned,
organised and executed with heartless viciousness and on an incremental basis.
Between 1981 and 2010, there were just 16 incidents of such attacks.
Law abiding communities
However, between 2011 and 2014, over
a period of just four years, 37 such attacks have been launched against our
hospitable, accommodating, peaceful and law-abiding communities by Fulani
herdsmen and marauders. These planned, systematic and coordinated attacks have
claimed the lives of over 4,000 innocent Southern Kaduna people, bona fide
citizens of Nigeria,” Sokfa lamented.
He added that: “The Southern Kaduna
peoples have at different fora and occasions cried out to both Federal and
state governments for protection, petitioned the government and security
agencies, participated in peace and reconciliation meetings and other numerous
peace initiatives with a view to bringing an end to this wicked agenda aimed at
wiping out the people of Southern Kaduna and indeed the people of the Middle
Belt as a whole, all to no avail. The Southern Kaduna people have repeatedly
drawn attention to the vicious wars being waged against them with the aim of
taking over their rich and fertile God-given ancestral lands.
The
atmosphere in the main hall of the State House Kaduna that Tuesday was
that of an uneasy calm. - See more at:
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/04/southern-kaduna-versus-fulani-herdsmenwhen-ceasefire-ignites-anger/#sthash.kXYicLFo.dpuf
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