A coalition of Civil Society Groups in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to urgently call an emergency meeting of governors of the region and the National Security Adviser (NSA) to devise a means of ending the insecurity that has led to the death of hundreds of people and forceful land encroachment.

The coalition in a press release on Thursday stated: “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must understand what this violence entails. He alone commands the assets required to address this situation. The violence is region-wide and no state can confront it alone. A regional strategy for the defence of the endangered populations of the Middle Belt is needed”.

*CIVIC COALITION AGAINST MASS ATROCITIES IN THE MIDDLE BELTk CALLS FOR URGENT INTERVENTION BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.*

The undersigned organizations register profound concern over the deteriorating security situation in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, including in Plateau, Benue, Nassarawa, Taraba, Kaduna, Borno, Gombe and Adamawa States. The persistent violence, characterized by targeted attacks on communities, massacres and mass abductions have resulted in countless lives lost and many more injured, broken and traumatized. The perpetrators have emptied entire communities and set about replacing them with imported settlers.

In recent times there appear to be three main additional triggers for the current upsurge of terrorist violence including first, the impending national census, for which carving a territory for the terrorist bandits will make them owners of the land after the census since the owners of the land will not be available to be counted in their houses; second, an acceleration of the crisis with the impending 2027 elections to potentially disenfranchise the middle belt and third, the institutionalization of the livestock ministry which appears to be erroneously interpreted as official signal for the take over of land for settlement of pastoralists.
The opening of new fronts of terrorists operations in Niger and Kwara states under the Lakurawa and Mahmuda armed groups heighten fears and concerns of safety and security.

We have undertaken a careful mapping of the trajectory and pattern of the attacks in affected states, accompanied by an assessment of the wanton loss of human lives, properties, communities and coexistence. The patterns evident in this latest bout of violence include the following:

i) The states and communities of the Middle Belt now suffering this campaign of systematic ethnic cleansing are all land-locked with no direct access to international borders.

ii) These attacks have been accompanied by methodical displacement of the affected communities. The perpetrators seek explicitly to liquidate the inhabitants of the affected communities and frighten any survivors into fleeing from their lands.

iv) The lands being taken over and now being resettled forcibly constitute a contiguous stretch of over 20,000 square kilometers across the territories of Benue, Nasarawa, and Plateau States. These attacks are also destroying farming and resilience mechanisms in the traditional bread basket of Nigeria and have devastating consequences for food security in the country.
vi) In effect, this is a campaign of ethnic cleansing which also has the effect of deliberately and methodically reshaping the electoral maps of the affected states.

We are in no doubt that this ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Middle Belt of Nigeria is also an attack on the future of elective government in the country.
This campaign of violence and systematic ethnic cleansing must be brought to an end. To end it, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must understand what this violence entails. He alone commands the assets required to address this situation. The violence is region-wide and no state can confront it alone. A regional strategy for the defence of the endangered populations of the Middle Belt is needed. To achieve this, attention is needed to the following:

Key Areas for Action:

1. Co-ordinated Action by Middle Belt Governors and NSA: We demand an urgent meeting of the governors of the states of the Middle Belt to define and adopt a co-ordinated, regional security strategy and to ensure all lands forcibly seized and occupied by terrorists and belligerents are returned to the autochthonous communities across Nigeria.

2. Consultation with Governors of Border States: We equally demand an urgent meeting of the Governors of the Border States of northern Nigeria to address the root causes of these crises.

3. Return of Displaced People and Communities to their Lands: We urge the Presidency to not only direct the security agencies to return displaced people and communities to their lands, but also provide the executive and political backing to discharge this responsibility to prevent the sabotaging of Governments directives in this regard.
4. Integrated Intelligence Framework: Develop and deploy an integrated intelligence framework that combines local knowledge from community members with technical intelligence capabilities of security agencies, ensuring that preventive action can be taken before attacks occur and taking the enforcement to the perpetrators before they attack.

5. Inter-Community Security Cooperation: Establish formal mechanisms for cooperation between communities that transcend ethnic and religious boundaries, creating joint security committees that can address potential conflicts before they escalate into violence.

6. Integration of Geo-Spatial and UAV Capabilities: Nigeria now has access to the technological solutions that can complement human capabilities in addressing the violence in this theatre, including the geo-spatial capabilities domiciled in the NIGCOMSAT and in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs/Drones). We appeal to the Federal Government to integrate and deploy these as necessary.

7. Reform of the Fire Arms Act of 2004: While government has often maintained that ‘security is everybody’s business ‘; the reality is communities are unable to withstand superior fire power just by keeping surveillance. Consequently, the Fire Arms Act should serve as a shield for vulnerable communities rather than a weapon against them. Current interpretations that prevent threatened communities from defending themselves while attackers operate with impunity must be urgently addressed through appropriate legislative reforms, executive orders and legal sanctions. Licensing regimes should enable communities under threat to access firearms for their own self-defence under the supervision of the security service.
8. Restoration of Illegally Deposed Chiefs, Scrapped Chiefdoms, Reversal from Illegally Renamed Chiefdoms and Mutilated and Destroyed Cultural Heritages.
Article 8(2) of the Rome Statute stipulates the intentional destruction of cultural heritage as war crime. In the last administration particularly in Kaduna state under Governor Nasir Elrufai, Chiefdoms such as the Adara chiefdom were scrapped, the identities of people and communities were illegally changed, chiefs were deposed by executive fiat for no justifiable reasons. Whole communities now exist as non-people. These injustices need to be addressed and reversed.

9. Judicial Action and Accountability: The judiciary is called upon to demonstrate unwavering commitment to justice by ensuring swift, transparent trials for perpetrators of violence. Courts must serve as deterrents by imposing appropriate penalties that reflect the gravity of these crimes against humanity.

10. Food Security: We recognize the real threat to food security and the disruption of governance and elections if the spate of the killings are not addressed. Consequently, we urge the Federal Government to swiftly protect communities to ensure food production is not threatened.

11. Guarantee the Right to Vote to All Displaced Communities: We demand that President Tinubu guarantee to all affected communities that their right to vote shall be imperishable. Accordingly, we equally demand that the INEC should initiate and announce measures to ensure that all communities affected by this campaign of ethnic cleansing shall not be denied their rights to vote.

12. Establishing a Special Crisis Accountability Bureau: We recognise that where justice is not served, the terror merchants shall perpetuate a culture of impunity and continue to wreck lives and communities. To ensure effective accountability for these crimes of ethnic cleansing, we call for the establishment and immediate deployment of a Special Crisis Accountability Bureau (SCAB) as a joint undertaking of the Chief of Defence Staff, National Security Adviser, DG-SSS, Chief of Defence Intelligence, and Inspector-General of Police under the supervision of the Chief of Defence Staff and National Security Adviser.

 

We call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Federal Government to prioritize the Constitutional mandate for the security and welfare of the people, to deploy aids to distressed communities and ensure communities are secured for governance, census and elections. We remain committed to supporting initiatives that promote peace, justice, and accountability in Nigeria and are ready to collaborate with authorities both in providing the body of evidence that informs our positions and in implementing sustainable solutions to this political crisis with profound humanitarian consequence.

Signed:

1. House of Justice

2. The Gideon & Funmi Para-Mallam Peace Foundation (TP-MPF)

3. Srarina Initiative for Peace Justice and Development (SIPJAD)

4. Resilience Aid Initiative (RADI)

5. Middle Belt Concern

6. Molluma Yakubu Centre for Medical Law & Mass Atrocities Prevention & Accountability

7. Southern Kaduna Resilience Fund (SKARF)

8. The Crime Prevention and Counseling Centre (CPCC)

9. Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW)

10. Christian Awareness Initiative of Nigeria (CHAIN)

11. Middle Belt Patriots

12. Middle Belt Times

13. Southern Kaduna Journalists Forum (SKJF)

14. Steven Dangana Foundation (SDF)

15. The Stride Leadership Foundation (SLF)

16. Stefanos (Relief) Foundation

17. Du Merci Children Development Ministry

18. Kibaku Area Development Association (KADA)

19. African Missions Network (AMNET)

20. Joint-Hands For Peace and Youth Empowerment

21. Center for Peace Education and Community Development
22. Sesor Empowerment Foundation.

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