Fulanis beg Osinbajo to save them from genocide

The Fulani community in Taraba state has cried out to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo about their community being targeted in an ongoing ethnic cleansing.

In reaction to the recent killings in the Sardauna Local Government Area of the state, the Fulani community has accused the Mambilla tribe of trying to wipe their tribe out over a land dispute.

In a press release signed by elders of the community, Alhaji Ahmadu Adamu, Malam Suleiman Musa, Alhaji Hassan Ardo and Alhaji Dauda Jae, the community complained about continuous attacks on their settlements across the local government area.

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They also alleged that the targeted killings are being carried out on the orders of the chairman of the local government, John Yep.

The statement said, "On the 16th of June, 2017 security personnel moved in the early hours and effected some arrests in Nguroje during which some suspected ring leaders of a group that has been fomenting trouble in the area got into the net of the security.

"On getting information about the development, the chairman of the local government, Mr John Yep immediately led some Mambilla youths to storm Nguroje alleging that the arrest was instigated by the Fulani. This led to a total siege on Nguroje and its environs.

"He ran across some villages mobilising his kinsmen under their militia group called 'Mun Nor Ambassadors of Peace' being the political attack dogs of a prominent politician from the area.

"Through this process, the council chairman was able to sell a dummy to his tribesmen across the entire local government painting a wrong and malicious picture that his kinsmen, the Mambilla ethnic group, was being attacked by the Fulanis.

"In fact he made a personal radio message through the Taraba State Broadcasting Service (TSBS) Gembu Booster Station calling on his kinsmen to execute the genocide on the station’s transmissions of Saturday evening and Sunday morning respectively.

"What followed thereafter was a coordinated and simultaneous attack on over 300 Fulani communities

"It is therefore with a heavy heart that we wish to draw the attention of the world to the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing being perpetrated against the Fulani in Sardauna local government area of Taraba state in the last four days.

"This carnage has escalated to all parts of the local government and is still going on with full impunity as the state government has remained unconcerned since then."

In light of the ongoing violence, the community condemned the non-reaction of Taraba state governor, Darius Ishaku, and called on Osinbajo to intervene with a state of emergency declaration, saying, "It has become necessary to call on the Acting President to, as a matter of urgent National Security, evoke the relevant sections of the Constitution and also do the needful by declaring emergency rule to allow for full fledge emergency services and the protection of our remaining people.

"We wish to further stress that the magnitude of this senseless killings deserves nothing less than a judicial commission of inquiry to be instituted by the federal government and the United Nations as we are not ready to accept any window dressing by the Taraba state government.

"This is because four days after this carnage the government did not utter even a word nor issue a statement condemning the killings on the Mambilla Plateau."