Group alleges plan to take over Southern Kaduna
The President, Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), a youth wing, Mr Isaac John, has said that there are attempts by the Fulani militias in the recent attacks to take over the region’s land.
He explained that following the recent attacks by the suspected Fulani militias, some communities have been razed down and their ancestral communities occupied by the bandits.
According to him, “They are making attempts to rename those communities. For instance, Agwam Adara, one of the paramount rulers of Southern Kaduna, was kidnapped and murdered. Immediately the news of his death filtered through the community, the government came up with a circular dividing his territory into three emirates inside Adara Chiefdom. This has never happened before. We don’t have an emirate system in Southern Kaduna.”
According to him, the government has never been sincere on the issues of insecurity in Kaduna since they have been calling for a state of emergency, stressing that the state government, for reasons best known to them, have failed to listen to the challenges the people are facing.
Speaking on the attacks on Southern Kaduna, John said that the area has been overtaken by bandits and terrorists, saying that the kidnapping is already out of hand.
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He lamented, “We should understand, most importantly, that the government is not sincere in tackling insecurity. There was a time when a friend’s phone got missing. We reported the case to a police station. They requested the number to track the phone and in a matter of hours, they went to the exact location and got the phone from the criminal, and got him arrested. It was almost like I was watching a movie with how smooth and seamless it was done. This is just one division of the police. Why is it that these bandits who kidnap people have a camp within the state, where a motorcycle can take one there to pay the ransom, but the government cannot track them there? People send recharge cards to them as part of their demands. This means they have active phone lines and their numbers are not hidden, but nothing is being done.”
Mr John wondered why in spite of the activities of the bandits, nothing is being done, stressing that they (bandits) demand motorbikes and they are given to them in their 20s, 30s and 50s and why the security personnel cannot track them with the bikes.
He called on the government to step up their game and do the needful, saying that kidnappers are criminals, terrorists and don’t deserve to live among people.
Mr Isaac John noted that when the attackers come to perform their evil enterprise, they go into farms and destroy crops and the few ones left, herders bring their cattle to feast on them.
He lamented that women can no longer go to their normal marketplaces where they transact business for fear of being attacked, pointing out that the situation is so bad that schools are being shut state-wide with nothing positively moving in the state.
He lamented that Governor Nasir El-Rufai, in his own wisdom, has not visited Internally-Displaced Persons (IDPs) to see how the people who voted him to the office are doing.
John observed that that is why they have been calling on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the state to restore law and order.
