Insecurity: Middle Belt Coalition urges Tinubu to secure communities ahead of census, elections

…Calls for reform of 2004 Fire Arms Act

IBRAHIM QUADRI

A group called, Civic Coalition Against Mass Atrocities in the Middle Belt, has urged President Bola Tinubu to prioritize the deployment of aids to ensure communities in the affected states are secured for governance, census and elections.

The organization which expressed sadness over the deteriorating security situation in the Middle Belt region said they are committed to supporting initiatives that promote peace, justice, and accountability in Nigeria and are ready to collaborate with authorities in implementing sustainable solutions to the political crisis.

The statement to this effect was signed by House of Justice, The Gideon & Funmi Para-Mallam Peace Foundation (TP-MPF), Srarina Initiative for Peace Justice and Development (SIPJAD), Resilience Aid Initiative (RADI), Middle Belt Concern, Molluma Yakubu Centre for Medical Law & Mass Atrocities Prevention & Accountability and Southern Kaduna Resilience Fund (SKARF).

Others include, The Crime Prevention and Counseling Centre (CPCC), Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), Christian Awareness Initiative of Nigeria (CHAIN), Middle Belt Patriots, Middle Belt Times and Southern Kaduna Journalists Forum (SKJF)

The rest are, Steven Dangana Foundation (SDF), The Stride Leadership Foundation (SLF), Stefanos (Relief) Foundation, Du Merci Children Development Ministry, Kibaku Area Development Association (KADA), African Missions Network (AMNET), Joint-Hands For Peace and Youth Empowerment, Center for Peace Education and Community Development and Sesor Empowerment Foundation.

The organizations listed the affected states, which include, Plateau, Benue, Nassarawa, Taraba, Kaduna, Borno, Gombe and Adamawa.

They maintained that persistent violence, characterized by targeted attacks on communities, massacres and mass abductions, has resulted in countless lives lost and many more injured, broken and traumatized.

They said, “In recent times there appear to be three main additional triggers for the current upsurge of terrorist violence including first, the impending national census, for which carving a territory for the terrorist bandits will make them owners of the land after the census since the owners of the land will not be available to be counted in their houses.

“Second, an acceleration of the crisis with the impending 2027 elections to potentially disenfranchise the middle belt and third, the institutionalization of the livestock ministry, which appears to be erroneously interpreted as an official signal for the take over of land for sthe ettlement of pastoralists.

“The opening of new fronts of terrorists operations in Niger and Kwara states under the Lakurawa and Mahmuda armed groups heighten fears and concerns of safety and security.”

The organizations reasoned that they had undertaken a careful mapping of the trajectory and pattern of the attacks in affected states, which according to them, they were accompanied by an assessment of the wanton loss of human lives, properties, communities and coexistence.

“The states and communities of the Middle Belt now suffering this campaign of systematic ethnic cleansing are all land-locked with no direct access to international borders.

“These attacks have been accompanied by methodical displacement of the affected communities. The perpetrators seek explicitly to liquidate the inhabitants of the affected communities and frighten any survivors into fleeing from their lands.

“The lands being taken over and now being resettled forcibly constitute a contiguous stretch of over 20,000 square kilometers across the territories of Benue, Nasarawa, and Plateau States. These attacks are also destroying farming and resilience mechanisms in the traditional bread basket of Nigeria and have devastating consequences for food security in the country.

“In effect, this is a campaign of ethnic cleansing which also has the effect of deliberately and methodically reshaping the electoral maps of the affected states.

“We are in no doubt that this ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Middle Belt of Nigeria is also an attack on the future of elective government in the country.

“This campaign of violence and systematic ethnic cleansing must be brought to an end. To end it, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must understand what this violence entails. He alone commands the assets required to address this situation. The violence is region-wide and no state can confront it alone.

They therefore called for a regional strategy for the defence of the endangered population.

“We demand an urgent meeting of the governors of the states of the Middle Belt to define and adopt a co-ordinated, regional security strategy and to ensure all lands forcibly seized and occupied by terrorists and belligerents are returned to the autochthonous communities across Nigeria.

“We equally demand an urgent meeting of the Governors of the Border States of northern Nigeria to address the root causes of these crises.

“We urge the Presidency to not only direct the security agencies to return displaced people and communities to their lands, but also provide the executive and political backing to discharge this responsibility to prevent the sabotaging of Government’s directives in this regard.

“Develop and deploy an integrated intelligence framework that combines local knowledge from community members with technical intelligence capabilities of security agencies, ensuring that preventive action can be taken before attacks occur and taking enforcement to the perpetrators before they attack.

“Establish formal mechanisms for cooperation between communities that transcend ethnic and religious boundaries, creating joint security committees that can address potential conflicts before they escalate into violence.

“Nigeria now has access to the technological solutions that can complement human capabilities in addressing the violence in this theatre, including the geo-spatial capabilities domiciled in the NIGCOMSAT and in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs/Drones). We appeal to the Federal Government to integrate and deploy these as necessary.

“While the government has often maintained that ‘security is everybody’s business ‘; the reality is communities are unable to withstand superior fire power just by keeping surveillance.

“Consequently, the Fire Arms Act should serve as a shield for vulnerable communities rather than a weapon against them. Current interpretations that prevent threatened communities from defending themselves while attackers operate with impunity must be urgently addressed through appropriate legislative reforms, executive orders and legal sanctions.

“Licensing regimes should enable communities under threat to access firearms for their own self-defence under the supervision of the security service.”