Southern, Middle Belt Alliance call for urgent end to killings in Nigeria
By Msugh Ityokura
An umbrella body, “The Southern Zone and Middle Belt Alliance for Peace” has called on the Federal Government, FG to urgently take legal and radical steps to put an immediate stop to security and various forms of insurgency perpetrated by misguided gun wielding non state actors in Nigeria.
The group decried the phenomenon of non state actors, seizing parts of the sovereign state of Nigeria, tasking president Bola Tinubu, state governors, traditional rulers, town union leaders, as well as different security agencies in the country to rise up to their fundamental responsibility of protecting the lives of citizens.
National president of the group, Dr. Okolie Amaechi Sadiq who spoke at a press briefing in Abuja Wednesday, underscored the urgent need for government to address the persistent level of risii insecurity in the country.
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The alliance suspects that the violent and criminal non state actors do not act without the support of highly placed and influential Nigerians, home and abroad pointing out that It is conventionally assumed that illegal traffickers of dangerous weapons work together with these violent and insurgent non state actors.
“As we speak now, many Nigerians have been driven away from their homes and made to live in refugee camps. Yet, there is no war going on in Nigeria. And it is not any natural disaster that has forced them out of their homes. The IDP inmates currently under deplorable conditions must be resettled back to their ancestral homes. This is an urgent call.
“Self defence is part of the fundamental rights of individuals. If the security agencies cannot defend and protect the citizens, if governments should abandon their primary duty of securing the life and welfare of individuals, then individuals will be justified in defending themselves by ang means available to them as self defense is not a crime” he said.
The Alliance said it wholeheartedly supports the ongoing efforts by President Tinubu to restore peace and stability in the country, calling on him to invest greater energy on healing the economy so that food and transportation prices should be greatly reduced as it will help abate the anger of many in Nigeria.
Besides, he called on international communities of goodwill to Nigeria to hasten to the help of Nigerians as acts cf insecurity, destabilization and insurgency can always spread to areas where they did not originate from.
He regretted that decades of banditry, kidnapping, land grabbing, sacking of communities, destruction of means of livelihood, infelicitous and illegal appropriation of mineral resources have continued to generate mistrust and insecurity in the country.
“We believe in project Nigeria for all. We believe in equity. We believe in peaceful coexistence of all. We believe in the fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution. And we believe that with peace and stability, Nigeria can achieve its manifest potentials. We believe that Nigeria can, indeed, become the pride of Africa” he said.
