Ex-military gov, Samuel Atukum wants killer herdsmen designated terrorists
By Jude Owuamanam, Jos
Former Military Governor of old Plateau State, Rear Admiral Samuel Bitrus Atukum (rtd) has called on the Federal Government and the international community to designate killer herdsmen as terrorists.
He also called for the establishment of state police as a panacea to the incessant killings in the country.
Speaking to newsmen in his Jos country home in Jenta, Kuru, against the backdrop of the recent massacre in Bokkos community, he said that this was because the killers are known and their abode is also known.
He said that both the state and Federal governments had not shown enough will to end the perennial killings in parts of the state, especially Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, Mangu, Riyom, and Jos South.
According to him, it’s not difficult to know the killers and the sophisticated weapon they’re using since they lived uphill from where they launch their attacks, stressing that a simple ballistic examination will determine where the weapons were coming from.
He reminisced on his days as military administrator when the Maitatsine religious sect held sway and how they were dealt with by the then military government.
He said that recently a coalition of Fulani had addressed a press conference in Kaduna where they gave conditions for peace in Plateau.
According to the retired naval officer, the conditions, which included the immediate and unconditional release of all arrested and detained Fulani people, disclosure of the whereabouts of their missing members as a result of the marauding attacks on their communities by security agencies and a guarantee that the natives would no longer kill their cattle, showed clearly that those who addressed the press briefing should be held responsible for the incessant killings in the state.
He said: “Government now has relevant information as to where they could start the investigation. We cannot allow Nigerians. under the pretext of freedom of speech, to be making this kind of speech a few days after the killings. These are unprovoked attacks.
“These criminals who are well known according to locals come from the hills; I am urging our security operatives to go up there and smoke them out where they are hibernating.
“Some of these hills and mountains are being inhabited by these killer herdsmen.
What is the difficulty in ordering security operatives to go all out and smoke them out from their hideouts?
These people come down from these hills, wreck havoc and disappear into thin air and that is where I believe they hide their weapons,” he declared.
“In the past, they used to deceive us with herder-farmer clashes. How can you have a clash in somebody’s bedroom? These people go into people’s bedrooms in the villages in their ancestral lands.”
He said that the whole idea about the crisis is to chase the indigenous peoples away from their ancestral lands in order to occupy them.
“This whole thing is about land-grabbing and to deny the people of their ancestral lands. If you look at the pattern of the attacks, coming during the farming season and harvest time showed clearly that another agenda is to create hunger in the land.
“The fact that these killers go into farmland and kill the farmers when they protest, does it not show that they’re getting protection from somewhere?
“These killer herdsmen are nothing but terrorists and they should be declared as terrorists.
He backed the creation of state police to curb these crises, saying that the members of the police force should be recruited among the indigenous communities and not from outsiders.
