Dogara urges Tinubu to bring perpetrators, sponsors of Plateau massacre to justice
By Samuel Luka
The immediate past Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Honourable Yakubu Dogara has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to ensure that the perpetrators of the recent massacre in Plateau state and their sponsors are brought to justice.
Rt. Hon. Dogara who made the call when he led some serving and former members of the House of Representatives on a condolence visit to Governor Caleb Mutfwang on Saturday in Jos, Plateau State, advised the President not to act like his predecessors that only mourned victims of killings in press statements.
According to him, such actions has led to the previous president been reduced to mourners-in-chief instead of taking responsibility as commanders-in-chief.
The former speaker while condemning the recent killings of about 200 people in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi local government areas of the state, maintained that those responsible for the genocide and orgy of violence are all out to end our ways of life of the law-abiding citizens and as such, must be stopped.
Dogara who described the perpetrators of violence as not just crazy but very dangerous, noted that they won’t just stop until they are stopped, adding that the responsibility of stopping them lies with the power of the commander-in-chief.
He said all forms of coercive security apparatus in the nation should be used to locate the perpetrators and their sponsors wherever they are littered in the ungoverned spaces in Nigeria whether in Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto or in southern Kaduna or in the south.
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“We must locate them and after locating them, the commander-in-chief must take justice to them or bring them to justice.” the former speaker suggested.
He said that the failure to either take justice to them or bring them to justice has always been the bane of the fight against terrorism and violence in Nigeria because it emboldens them.
The former speaker asked: “If they will kill on the Plateau and go scot-free, why won’t they kill in any other state in the North and in the South?
Dogara said failure to act at that level is more or less an incentive for the perpetrators to continue to deploy such unbridled violence on the people.
“So, my call, therefore, is to the President to rise up and for him to know that condolences at this moment, whether on the Plateau or elsewhere in the country, are better given in form of decisive action against the perpetrators of these violence and not by mere words”, Hon Dogara added.
“It beats my imagination as to why these things are happening in a country like Nigeria; violence, sponsors of violence and those who actually participate in it. We may not know the reasons why they do this, as is the case with Plateau, but we can not deny that they want to upend our ways of life”, he said.
In his response, Governor Caleb Muftwan who expressed gratitude to the former Speaker for always identifying with Plateau state, urged him not to be silent but to keep pushing for the interest of the people.
“There is a deliberate orchestrated plan to cause mayhem so as to discomfit us. We may be knocked down, but we are not knocked out. Our spirits are not broken. God has placed us where we are, and He will preserve us, ” he said.
