BORNO: Protect yourselves against bandits, Arewa group tells Northerners

THE Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), a pan-Arewa social-political organisation, has urged the people of the region to protect themselves against bandits.

The group said this following the recent killing of 43 rice farmers in Borno State by Book Haram terrorists.

Addressing newsmen on Saturday in Abuja, CNG spokesman, Abul-Azeez Sulieman, said the advice became necessary because the Federal Government has consistently displayed cluelessness in its war against insurgency ravaging the region.

Suleiman noted that the utterances of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicty, Garba Shehu; Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, and Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai, have “exposed the misleading claims that the President Muhammadu Buhari government and our military have decimated the insurgents….”

He condemned specifically the statement made by Shehu in the wake of the massacre that the farmers did not get permission from the military before returning to their farms, describing it “lame unsympathetic excuse”.

He added: “We are thus agitated by the lame unsympathetic excuse of breaching army protocol by the slain farmers made by presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, the indecent and callous attribution of the people’s anger and frustration to mere politicking by Information Minister, Lai Mohammed and the unhelpful, scary twenty-year life span prediction for the rampaging security situation by the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai.

“In the light of the current general and pervasive insecurity being felt across the North with regularity of attacks, killings, kidnapping, insurgency, highway robberies and the sacking of entire communities and the realisation that leaders such as the ones we have, who cannot be advised or criticised, are a liability, have increased our conviction that the only remaining option is for the people to mobilise for a regulated self protection.”

He pointed out that the wide condemnation that greeted the recent killing was because of the high number, noting that “these killings and kidnaps by audacious criminal gangs that roam freely are constant across all communities and highways in northern Nigeria.”

He disclosed that CNG would convoke an all northern Nigeria security review in Kaduna State, on Monday 14 and Tuesday 15, December 2020.

According to him, “the review session shall draw representation from security ex- perts, traditional and religious groups, the civil society, business community, government, trade, youth and women associations from each of the 19 northern states to discuss how to achieve comprehensive synergy between states from uniform action as against the isolated responses that have proved ineffective, mobilise broad-based community action, improve security/community cooperation in especially information sharing imperatives.”