Center for Development and Rights Advocacy
PRESS STATEMENT/BACKGROUND
1. On Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st March 2013, indigenous hilly billy people of Attakar in Kaura Local Government of Kaduna State were assaulted and sacked from their homes by gunmen to Internally Displaced Persons camps in Fadan Attakar and other villages. The world was denied knowledge of this until Center for Development and Rights Advocacy’s visited to the camps on 2nd April 2013. Our visit was followed by Kaduna State Government and its SEMA, NEMA, Members of House of Representatives from Southern Kaduna Senatorial Zone, and other Southern Kaduna based groups.
2. The scale of inhumanity and photos of women and children in camps, forced CEDRA to write the body charged with monitoring of human rights abuses in Nigeria on (Nigeria Human Rights Commission). CEDRA’s report encompassed photos of victims and interviews of emergency camps managers. All members of National Assembly from the zone and Chair of National Assembly on Human Rights were given the same report. National Human Rights Commission and all those copied have acknowledged our report.
3. It will take the sagacity of a Native Authority trained statistician to know the number of subsequent attacks on the surviving villages and persons in Attakar, since the first incidences of 30th and 31st March 2013. However, the victims (represented by ATTAKAR DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION) on 2nd October 2013, told the world the number and dates of assaults and losts by their communities in the following statistics:
(a). 19 & 20 March, 2013 Mafan and Telak: 30 were people killed by “suspected Fulani gunmen”
(b) 21/03/2014 Kirim, Danti, Mayit, Zadian, Dajak, Tinga Mogwai and Dugurag: “This attack left 14 people dead, mostly children. A total if 247 houses were destroyed including 4 churches and 2 schools. Food items and personal proceeds worth over 150 million Naira were destroyed”.
(c). 30/03/2013 Mafan, Muyit & Zilan: 32 people were killed by “gunshots in an attempt to escape the attackers”. All the 3 villages were “completely destroyed with no houses left, including 2 churches and 2 primary schools. 1500 people were displaced…”
(d). 13/95/2013 Zangang District: 13 people were killed, 82 houses destroyed including the District Head’s house, a church and a primary school also burnt. Over 3000 people were displaced.
(e). 2/09/2013 Adu village in Zangang District: “This attack was a surprise to the entire community as this village had accommodated most of the settled Fulani in the land and had enjoyed ‘harmonious living” Effect: “a family of four was completely wiped out, a total of 9 including a Zilan woman killed by a fleeing attacker lost their lives and five people were seriously injured, one later died from serious machete cuts…” This attack came after the killing of two Takad men on 1/09/2013 at Mayit.
(g). 12/09/2013 “Killing of an elderly man and a small girl in Mayit who went to harvest yams on her father’s farm, the sister of the girl suffered serious machete cuts….”
(h). 23/09/2013 Attack on Tajak in Tafan district: “… no life was lost but 50 houses were burnt, foodstuffs and personal property estimated at over 20 million naira were lost”.
(i). 28/09/2013 “Barely three weeks after the the attack on Adu, the people woke up with sad news of another attack in Zangang on 28/09/2013. This time, villages not affected in the first attack in the district were targeted and the local bridge linking the community was destroyed to block any possible intervention. In this attack, 15 people lost their lives, mostly youths of the villages, five people were injured and five houses burnt.
4. (a) From the first occasion of 30th and 31st March 2013 to the last one of 29th October 2013 , Kaduna State government made only two pronouncements which were usual appeal for peace and phantom assurances of finding and prosecuting perpetrators. Seven months down the lane, nobody/ persons has/have been arrested and prosecuted as promised by Kaduna State Government.
(b) On one occasion, suspected terrorist were arrested in a road block near Zankan village after an attack in a VECTRA car with cloths stained with bloods and booth full of arsenals used uphills. Amongst the suspects were two Fulani’s living in Attakar. Initial interrogations shows the local compradors served as guide to the combatants. Because of these important revelations,they were taken to Kaura police station. Late in the evening the car and suspects were taken out of Kaura Village to God knows where. As I write, today, 29th October 2013, nothing has been heard, and they have not been seen in any court of law answering charges of their crimes on our people.
5. As we (CEDRA) are still struggling to make a case for Genocide for these people, with little or no support from Core Northern groups like Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF)and Arewa Elders Forum (AEF), on 26th October 2013, Al-Mistapha and his Southern Kaduna comrades appeared on the scene under the guise of donating relief materials to victims of the series of assaults enumerated herein before.
6. After the ritual of donating relief materials to the people, Al-Mustapha and his Southern Kaduna compradoes assembled Attakar Chief and his people and Fulani settlers communities in a hall for what they dissimulatively labeled A PEACE MEEETING. By this, it therefore means; Al-Mustapha, other groups or persons had a hidden agenda they denied the people the knowledge of. And from all sources ,the clearance they had from the security agencies who told the world a while ago that all occasions involving gathering of people must have clearance from them in the state, was certainly violated.
7. Al-Mustapha, and others executed the second agenda perfect! Because for the first time, settlers whose status and presence we never recognised got their first legitimacy as stakeholders in Southern Kaduna soil. That drilled an opening on the wall for them and gave them the audacity to table their 10 POINT AGENDA( though only three were enumerated).
8. (a) Al-Mustapha ,his Southern Kaduna cohorts , and Fulani representatives bamboozled Attakar community into accepting an invitation to Abuja for a second round of “peace talks”( Another version of Camp David and Oslo). The settlers and representatives of uphills-butchers of Attakar promised that they will enumerate their remaining 7 conditions Abuja. The question is: was the environment they want to claim equal right to, too hot to unveil their other requests? To demonstrate brazen arrogance and hyperactive idiotism, the head of the team promised to foot the bill of the ABUJA SUMMIT. And wool headed Southern Kaduna team under his spell are already thanking him for that act of generosity.
(b) Hope those Southern Kaduna people who went and helped Al-Mustapha will connect with Alfred Nobel’s screening committee to nominate Major Hamza Al-Mustapha ( their man in the mirror or Mandela of Southern Kaduna) for 2013 NOBEL PRIZE FOR PEACE.
QUESTIONS FOR MUSTAPHA AND HIS SOUTHERN KADUNA COHORTS
1. How many of these skirmishes are there in Northern Nigeria that needs similar interventions from them?
2. Why was Southern Kaduna singled out and the first of many trouble spots in the north to be visited by Al-Mustapha?
3. Since when did Al-Mustapha starts hating blood, dead bodies and acts of terror?
4. When is he going to provide relief materials and hold peace meeting between Birom and Fulani in Plateau State, and probably invite them to Abuja for a second leg?
5. When is he embarking on a similar mission to Tafawa Belewa Local Government of Bauchi State and invite them to Abuja for a follow-up jaw jaw?
6. When is he going to see Tiv and Jukun in Taraba State and promise to foot their bills in Abuja for a second meeting?
7. When is he going to sit with Baba Alakyo in Nasarawa State and invite him to Abuja for peace talks?
8. When is going to Yobe, Borno and Adamawa and talk to Boko Haram commanders and local communities they are preying on and invite Imam Shekau and his people to Abuja for further talks?
9. Al-Mustapha was jailed for long and his properties confiscated, who gave him the money for such a cash consuming venture and philanthropic misadventure?
OBSERVATIONS AND WORDS TO Al-MUSTAPHA’S SOUTHERN KADUNA ALLIES
1. You have indeed created history that will go down with you, until His second coming. That history is of providing legitimacy to a trans-borders wandering race- whose trademark is vandalism, primitive colonization and usurpation of communities properties and inheritances along their path.
2. Your agreeing to export the so-called peace meeting to Abuja has again eroded our prestige and dignity as a people that acts of terror were committed against and led by the nose by an agent of the perpetrators to a fake peace meeting outside the theatre of the crime.
3. You have dipped your hands into a hive full of stinging bees, walked your fins into the net of the enemy, dragged your legs into his booby trap, and tightened the noose of repression on your necks. You are surely in, getting out is what we are waiting to see.
4. I prefer you don’t go to Abuja. Not going will only scale down the degree of the damage done on our community and your persons. But will never dust off that gigantic dent from the history of your lives. The Al-Mustapha we know will read the end of meeting communiqué you wouldn’t know the content and how it will be reported to the whole world. CNN, Aljazeera, Fox News, BBC/VOA Hausa and almighty channels are waiting to show your faces embracing agents of representatives of terrorists and messengers of Satan on earth.
5. If you weren’t part of the scheme of Al-Mustapha but victims of his legendary craftiness, you must rush and tell the world your story and distance yourself from him until Christ comes. It is often said silence is golden, on this case, it isn’t. CONCLUSION
It is about time Southern Kaduna people sat down and looked at their very existence in the state and country at large. This living like sheep without a shepherd in a plain full of carnivores must end, if we aspire to preserve this and succeeding generations of Southern Kaduna on earth. We are the only zone which got ample opportunities but squandered them on the altar of wettism, indolence, share wickedness and myopia.
We have just two full moons away from an election year, yet, we still don’t have a political agenda. All we see are opportunistic cream and demented set of political class whose best action is dashing of mandates without extracting any deal from beneficiaries of their action. You don’t read their advertorial when serious issues facing our very existence are up, only when they want to endorse inept or corrupt governments.
The same troop is supported by a strong gerontocratic block- whose only lethal cards is threat of cursing young progressive minds who are resisting their refusal to quit the playing field to the spectators seats. They hate critical thinkers, hate healthy debates, and hate the truth like biblical Pharaohs. This team have successfully recruited youths whose hearts are dead and incited them against people asking for respect and recognition of our interest in the business of the State and the Nation.
These people want to quiet all voices from the Southern Kaduna to continue to perpetuate their inordinate ambitions of picking crumbs from the table of their masters. Unfortunately, their continued shackling under the myths and realities of yesteryear is boomeranging and exposing their lameness by minute. If wishes were horses, they would have filed an amendment to International, regional and national laws of rights to exclude Southern Kaduna youths from those to withdraw from such pool of rights. We shall continue enjoy those rights irrespective of how long that is making their faces look.
From now henceforth, when they endorse political office holders without consultation and proper assessment of the running political current, we shall counter and walk on the opposite direction. It shall no longer be easy or smooth for them like knife on butter. We shall hurdle their lanes with mines of reason and logic until they understand that they have converted the house to a political Babel where each is speaking his political language.
All these acts of wickedness against the people shall never last forever. Their winter of blackmails will make way for summer of reality. The poor of Southern Kaduna will surely liberate themselves from internal and external oppressors- peacefully. And surely, we shall back the BABYLONIAN RIVER BANK OF KADUNA STATE, and sing the Negro Spiritual of free at last, free at last, thank God am free at last.
Signed.
John Danfulani,
Convener, Center for Development and Rights Advocacy (CEDRA)
Kaduna , 28th October, 2013 www.
