Form Teryima Ajijah. Jos
The President, Evangelical Winning All Church (ECWA), Rev. Dr Stephen Baba Panya, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to proscribe Fulani herdsmen killing innocent citizens in Nigeria as a terrorist group.
Rev. Panya made the call at a press conference held at the ECWA headquarters in Jos, Plateau state, on Wednesday.
According to the cleric, proscribing herdsmen as a terrorist organization will be the solution to the incessant killing by herdsmen. “Unless these Fulani killer herdsmen are treated as terrorists, the situation will continue to persist,” he said.
The ECWA President expressed sadness over the recent assassination attempt on the Governor of Benue state by the suspected herders. He said the act of the Fulani’s who attempted murder on the governor of Benue state is capable of splitting Nigeria as a country,
“The attempted assassination of His Excellency, Dr. Samuel Ortom, the seating Governor of Benue State, amounts to introducing another very dangerous dimension to the security challenge, which if not properly and decisively handled, can threaten the corporate existence of Nigeria,’ Rev Panya stressed.
Speaking further on the state of insecurity in Nigeria, Rev. Panya charged authorities concerned to arrest the Islamic cleric, Sheikh Gumi, who recently alleged that Christian soldiers are responsible for killing some persons identified as Muslims.
“The utterances of self-acclaimed negotiators and so-called mediators like Sheikh Gumi, are clearly effort to stir the bandits towards a religious war. Nothing less can be deduced from his statement to the Fulani militia that he was reliably told it was Christian soldiers that treated them harshly and killed them. This is totally condemnable and it would have been expected that government would totally condemn his clandestine mission while relevant security agencies would have done the needful,” he stated.
Similarly, he advised Nigeria government to curtail activities of Fulani groups harassing Nigerians with comments each time an incident occurred. “The MACBAN and all non-state actors must be called to order to stop their incitive and vituperative statements and activities,” he added.
The ECWA President, appealed to President Buhari to immediately implement the 2014 national conference resolutions, which according to him can proffer solution to the insecurity and other challenges been currently faced in the country.
“To ignore the deliberations and resolutions of the 2014 conference is tantamount to throwing away the baby with the bath water. We therefore, re-iterate our call that that the 2014 National Conference, which has over 600 resolutions, be implemented because it has substantially addressed these challenges. We urge the Buhari administration to put in place the necessary mechanisms for implementation of recommendations of the Conference Report,” he solicited.
