Why killings may persist in Plateau, others, by Dogara
By Samuel Luka
A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara has warned that mindless killings by criminal groups in Plateau States and other parts of the country may persist if the Federal Government continued to treat perpetrators and their sponsors with kid gloves.
Dogara spoke on Saturday in Jos, the Plateau State capital when he led a group of serving and former legislators on a condolence visit to Governor Caleb Caleb Mutfwang over the recent massacre in the state by terrorists and bandits.
The former Speaker observed that the criminal elements are emboldened by failure on the part of government to either take justice to them or to bring them to justice.
He bemoaned the lack of political will to prosecute offenders, which he said has continued to weaken the fight against terrorism and banditry in the country.
“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?
“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”, he said.
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The ex lawmaker charged President Bola Tinubu to rise up to the occasion by bringing the perpetrators and sponsors of the mindless killings in Plateau State and other parts of the country to justice.
Dogara said: “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.
“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.”
Dogara, in a veiled reference to former President Muhammadu Buhari, urged President Tinubu not to mourn victims of mindless killings only through press statements.
According to him, such actions only earned Buhari the “mourners-in-chief” sobriquet, instead of taking responsibility as commanders-in-chief.
Describing the perpetrators of violence as not just crazy but very dangerous, Dogara 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 noted that those responsible for the recent killings of about 200 persons in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi local government areas of the state, were out to “end our ways of life as law-abiding citizens and as such, must be stopped”.
He charged President Tinubu to deploy the nation’s coercive security apparatus to locate the perpetrators and their sponsors wherever they might be hiding in Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Southern Kaduna or anywhere in the south.
“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 said.
In his response, Governor Caleb Mutfwang expressed gratitude to the former Speaker for always identifying with Plateau state and 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”, the governor said.
