“When a group of people attack another group with the intention of wiping them off the face of the earth, it is genocide. When you employ a policy of starvation and trying to use that to wipe a community or a group of people, it’s genocide.”
These were the words of Solomon Dalong, former Minister of Sports as he weighed in on last week’s killing of Plateau State, for the umpteenth time, all but, accusing the Nigerian governments at the various levels as well as security operatives of petting the issue.
Particularly, he said the authorities were not only aware of the identities and where to locate the rampaging killers that left over 50 people dead in Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State, last week, only that they lacked the political will to find and eliminate them.
Dalong, while appearing on The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on ARISE NEWS, on Monday, blamed what he called the longstanding reluctance of authorities in the country to confront the truth for the persistence of the situation, saying for starters the tag given to the phenomenon was wrong.
Hear him: “There is nothing like herder-farmer clashes on the Plateau. These are terrorists. They have enclaves. They grab land, rustle cattle, and displace natives. In the bush, there is a government, and these places are known.
“Let us not be hiding about Ministry of Livestock. Ministry of Livestock cannot even do anything about this problem. If you sum up this, you will come back to this issue of lack of a political will because if the political will to deal with the situation is there, these people will be given their rightful designation. They are terrorists. There was no farm or other animals that were either rustled by the community or they trespassed into any farmland that resulted into this series of attacks we are hearing.”
He also dismissed the excuse of difficult terrain and access roads often cited by security agencies, for their difficulty in dealing with the situation, stating that in country with a serious mindset to operatives should have adopted the use of modern surveillance technologies to redeem the situation adding that the situation would soon lead to genocide.
His words: “The security said, well, we couldn’t do anything because there are no access roads. I couldn’t fathom that because in a technologically-driven economy like ours, would the issue be that of access roads? What happened to drones and cameras, other sophisticated gadgets of intelligence gathering?
“The continued reluctance to name the violence for what it is — genocide — would only allow the attackers to remain on top of the situation while officials pretend to be. Nigerians must reject the ethnic framing of the conflict and demand a stronger, swifter response grounded in truth and justice.
“If we must be very honest in dealing with the plateau situation, first, we will have to stop pretending that it is herder-farmers’ clashes. Not at all. It is terrorism. It is genocidal because it has met the international definition of genocide. When a group of people attack another group with the intention of wiping them off the face of the earth, it is genocide. When you employ a policy of starvation and trying to use that to wipe a community or a group of people, it’s genocide. So, what is happening is genocidal.
“The problem is for the Federal Government to designate these people with their rightful names, consider them criminals, and stop even attaching ethnic identity to them. Yes, predominantly they belong to an ethnic nationality. But I don’t see them as operating in the overall interest of that particular ethnic nationality.
“Rather, they are criminals. And so if we do not treat them as criminals, we will miss the point and we’ll continue to hold visits to Plateau State by government officials and they will be on top of the situation while the criminals are on top of the situation.”
