Human rights writers challenge Buhari over his silence on armed Fulani cattle herdsmen

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has been challenged by the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (Huriwa) to instruct the security forces to treat marauding Fulani herdsmen as terrorists.

 

Over recent years, nomadic Fulani cattle herders have become a huge security risk in Nigeria as well armed with AK47 assault rifles, they have wrecked havoc on numerous farming communities across the country.  Whenever their livestock eat local crops, it leads to clashes with farming communities and Fulani reprisals have tended to be very brutal and bloody, sometimes, leaving hundreds dead.

 

Of late, several state governments have called on the federal government to do something about the matter but so far, President Buhari, himself an ethnic Fulani, has been mum ion the matter. Huriwa has bemoaned the continued silence of President Buhari and called on him to give clear directives to armed security operatives to treat the Fulani herdsmen as terrorists.

 

Huriwa national coordinator Comrade Emmanuel‎ Onwubiko, said: “Huriwa is demanding the removal of the director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS) Alhaji Daura for turning that national security institution to an exclusive protection and propaganda wing of the armed Fulani herdsmen responsible for mass killings across the country.

 

"Also, the conspiratorial silence of the DSS concerning the genocide by armed Fulani herdsmen in the Agatu community of Benue State and many others including Taraba, Plateau, Delta, Enugu, Anambra and Edo States and the rapidity of the unscientific and provocative statement made by the DSS to claim that members of the Indigenous People of Biafra slaughtered the five kidnapped Fulani herdsmen even without any forensic evidence has clearly depicts the current hierarchy of DSS as sectional and myopic. He should therefore be dismissed for lacking professionalism and for attempting to ignite ethnic genocide against Igbo residing in northern Nigeria.”

 

In addition, the group also demanded that the president addresses the nation in a national broadcast to comprehensively deal with the matter. Last week, President Buhari said that saboteurs who attack oil pipelines will be treated like Boko Haram terrorists but made no mention of what will be done to Fulani herdsmen.