The Southern Kaduna people is making arraignment to take Kaduna State governor, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero to International Criminal Court over his silence on the genocide against the people of the area.
The group lamented that each time people attacking the area are arrested with guns, the state governor, Yero, always ordered for their release under the guise that they are hunters.
“This should be hunters of human beings in Southern Kaduna because hunting was banned since the 2011 post election crises. why is it that No any other tribe has been arrested with heavy weapons of mass destruction except the so call Fulani that hunt people? If hunting was banned, and gazetted, we see this as a plan by the governor to keep promoting killings. We demand an immediate prosecution of people arrested with weapons in Ladduga, Kwoi Kafanchan and many other places. justice must be done,” an elderly man from Southern Kaduna disclosed this to 247ureport just after the press conference published yesterday.
the transcription of the press conference read as follows:
Barr Zakari Sogfa
While I cannot speak on behalf of Zamfara and Katsina people, even as much as I sympathise with them, I can speak for the people of Southern Kaduna. They have been specifically targeted for extermination. And this extermination does not fall in the form of incidental robbery or conflicts or conflicts between Fulani Herdsmen and farmers. It is a deliberate pogrom to wipe us out of existence. If you look at the tendencies, it has been on the increase. And we have provided evidence of the 53 incidences of attacks on Southern Kaduna for the Press to see and verify. We are giving statistics and figures. This has been following a particular trend. We are saying that if you see that kind of weapons, the kind of ferocity, using all kinds of guns and explosives to blow up people and homes. And we are saying that this trend is not only in Southern Kaduna, that it is spreading to many parts of the Middle Belt. While governors of Plateau, Benue and Nasarwa were meeting, our governor was absent. That is our complain. He is the Chief Security Office of Kaduna state, who has a social contract with the people, he should be seen doing something. This a requirement on him, this a right for the people.. .
Barr, Francis Kozah (Southern Kaduna Lawyers’ Forum).
What is political about the people asking that government respects its social contract with the people. Is it politics that lives have been lost, property destroyed? We have this cases cleary stated in the Press Statement. The only person playing politics with this tragedy is the person that is refusing to take his responsibility seriously. This a statement of failure on the part of government. If we are attacked, we shall have the right to our self defence. What is political about this? The reality that we are visited by unprecedented terror is the truth, and not politics. We shall take all legitimate means to defend ourselves if government fails to protect us.
Barr Gloria
Many times when issues like taking someone to the ICC comes up, people wonder if the ICC is not in this world. This is just one of the legal avenue that we can articulate what our concerns are. And for anyone to think that we issuing out empty threats on the ICC, is for someone to be joking. If after a while, we discover that the state government, or outside authorities are not taking our plight seriously, we shall take our complaints to any international court in the world, and ensure that we get the justice that we deserve. So, the issue of ICC is not a threat, it is an avenue, it is just another option we hope to take, and we are working on it.
SOKFA
I want to make it very clear. The Southern Kaduna People are not the only ones to go to the ICC, or other international Forums to articulate their cases. We have cases even in ECOWAS here, where Meyiti Allah have taken communities, the state and even the Federal government to court. The Ogonis have done the same. Actually, the AU charter encourages us to do that. And the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is such that does not discourage us from going to the ICC. What we are saying is tha government should be enlightened enough to understand that there are some issues you cant play politics with. And this is one of them. And we will resist anyone pulling wool over our peoples eyes by bringing in politics to cover the points we are raising. If you go to Moroa, or to Atakad, where our people are killed and decimated. They were not killed based on whether they were PDP or APC. It is villages wiped out. And look at the coalition that are addressing this press conference. We are all professional engaged in all kinds of human endeavors, not career politicians. Some may have sympathy for a particular party, but what counts now, is that we are Southern Kaduna people, and our survival is at stake, down home.
Bonnat
In the events that anybody thinks that we are playing politics over our lives, over lands, our heritage, our survival, the it is that person that is playing politics, because that person is trying to shift responsibility to avoid doing the right thing. When some somebody keeps telling you, ‘keep the peace, go and do dialogue’ and you go and do dialogue and immediately, there is a massacre. Each time you do the meeting, or peace talks, you are visited by massacre. Each time you appeal, it is followed by more massacre. And yet somebody tells you, ‘keep the peace. Live in peace with one another’. And you know that you are always attacked with no provocation. And the people that are doing the massacre, those breaking the peace are going about freely, just to make us look at if we are equal partakers in the crisis. That is what playing politics with human tragedy is. That is what the state is doing – playing politics with our lives. So, nobody should try and make a political capital from our plight in this case.
Dr. Zahuwu Bonnat
I want to state as follows, that we are aware of the meeting yesterday. And that meeting dragged out, because people waited and waited and the meeting did not take place. The key Stakeholders – the traditional rulers, our community leaders waited and were all humiliated after waiting for three hours. So they left. And somebody would now come up and say they held a meeting. And that SOKAPU president was there, and the Fulani were there. Are telling us that the Fulani that were there, who purportedly signed a cease fire, have agreed that they are the ones that have been killing our people?
Those Fulani that signed the agreement, are they the ones killing our people. If they agree that they are the ones killing our people, did they explained why they are doing so? Because we never attacked them. Government says ‘warring’ parties. That is not true. There is nothing like warring parties. We are not at war with the Fulani. The Fulani are at war with us. Therefor the questions of signing any ‘ceasefire’ does not arise. It is just another round of politics as far as we are concern. You don’t call a whole community of people and their respectable, first class chiefs to a meeting and keep them for hours, and you frustrate them and they leave. If anybody says he has sign a peace document, in as much as crave and insist on peace, we don’t believe in what they signed. Now, if the Fulani that purportedly signed such a document agreed that they have been attacking our people, then we demand that government should start taking legal proceedings immediately to by arresting and prosecuting those that massacre our defenceless men, women, and children in their hundreds. You cannot go and pepper over what is happening to Southern Kaduna people, because somebody sent a DIG to broker peace. Where was the DIG when they were killing our people? So this issue is beyond anybody coming to Kaduna and getting people to signed document, to say that we have achieved peace in Kaduna. We are still feeling very vulnerable, and this has not given us any assurance for our safety.
