Benue: HURIWA backs Gov. Ortom, urges Buhari to declare herdsmen terrorists

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, on Sunday reiterated that Fulani herdsmen are terrorists.

HURIWA urged the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to declare armed herdsmen as a terrorist group.

The frontline rights advocacy group made the call while backing a similar request made by the Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom.

Ortom had called for the proscription of armed Fulani herdsmen, following attacks in the state.

The governor had stated that only a terrorist group would deliberately choose to violate the Benue anti-open grazing law.

However, HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko said: “For umpteenth time, the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration should declare armed Fulani herdsmen as a terrorist group including The MIYETTI ALLAH CATTLE OWNERS ASSOCIATION which backs the daredevil activities of the killer Fulani herdsmen.”

The rights group also berated the Buhari-led administration over its perceived silence on the killings linked to Fulani herdsmen.

According to Onwubiko: “The biased policy of President Muhammadu in appeasing the killer armed Fulani herdsmen is the single most dangerous public relations damage being done to the Nigerian Fulani community because the violent activities of the few who are being backed by some influential power wielders in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration is making other multi-Ethnic and Religious groups in Nigeria to perceive the Fulani indigenous Nigerians as war mongers and mass killers.

“The best solution to this building up of toxic perception about the Fulani ethnicity is for the current administration to declare armed Fulani herdsmen as terrorists so the anti-terrorism law is applied fully to deal decisively with the killer Fulani herdsmen who have clearly declared war on Nigeria and Nigerians including even the peace-loving Fulani like those killed by armed Fulani herdsmen in a part of Bauchi State recently.

“HURIWA has for over fifty times since the last five years asked that President Muhammadu should emphatically declare armed Fulani herdsmen as terrorists because of the cocktails of organized genocides and mass murders that they have continued to perpetrate since the last few years, resulting in the killings of over 6,000 innocent people all over the nation with the epicenter being the North Central states of Southern Kaduna State, Benue and Plateau states.

”We are sure that the President who is Fulani has refused to take steps to protect Nigerians who have being under bombardment and attacks from largely foreign Fulani herdsmen recruited by the Local Fulani herdsmen to unleash bloody violence against farm owners and villagers so as to occupy these lands for purposes of illegally grazing of their cows instead of establishing ranches to observe the twenty-first-century compliant agricultural practices of animal husbandry.”