The Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law (Intersociety) has claimed that over 300 Christians have been killed in Southern Kaduna in 200 days.
Intersociety, in a letter to Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu Abubakar, dated July 22, 2020, said:
“Southern Kaduna has lost no fewer than 300 defenseless Christians in first 200 days of 2020 or 1st Jan to July 20, 2020. Out of this figure, Adara Community and environs in Kajuru Local Government Area was visited with 152 Christian deaths while remaining parts of Southern Kaduna took 148 deaths. In the past twenty days or July 1 to July 20, 2020, Southern Kaduna has further lost 107 Christian lives to Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen attacks or violence. That is to further say that the total Christian casualties from Jihadist Herdsmen killings across Nigeria including Southern Kaduna, Benue and Plateau States and Igbo Land in the past 200 days or 1st Jan to 20th July 2020 have risen to 926 deaths; out of which Southern Kaduna lost 300 and the rest of the country recorded 626 killings or Christian deaths.”
The letter was signed by Intersociety’s four principal officers: Emeka Umeagbalasi, Board Chair; Barr Damaris Amaka Onuoha, Head of Campaign & Publicity; Barr Uju Igboeli, Head of Civil Liberties & Rule of Law; and Barr Ndidiamaka Bernard, Head of Int’l Justice & Human Rights.
The rights group strongly called on the authorities of the Nigeria Police Force High Command led by IGP Adamu to urgently rise “to the occasion by urgently drafting secularly composed special police detachments to Southern Kaduna especially in the Christian dominated areas of the State so as to secure and protect the endangered Christian populations or communities in the State who are now massacred at will on daily basis by the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and their affiliated Jihadist groups operating under different names and covers across the state.”
The letter also called on the Nigeria Police High Command under the IGP “to secure and protect Nigerians secularly and without bias or soft spot for any ethnic or religious grouping.” The IGP was equally strongly urged to detect and end the perceived raging culture of conspiratorial fraternity or “brothers at jihad” among the drafted security and law enforcement agencies in Kaduna State.
“Such special police detachments under our demand must particularly be dominated by secularly composed experienced and specially trained policing intelligence personnel or detectives from the Force Intelligence and Criminal Investigation (F-CID) as well as anti terrorism and special operations squads drawn from the High Command’s Department of Operations. Their composition must exclude the personnel of the Mobile Police (MPF) because they have become ‘a doyen of corruption and incompetence’ within the Nigeria Police Force,” Intersociety said.
“It is also our call that the Kaduna State Police Command should totally be overhauled and secularly re-composed, which must include immediate removal and transfer of the State Commissioner of Police, Umar Musa Muri and total and secularly reorganization of the Operations and the intelligence or detective departments of the State Police Command. This is because there seems to be conspiratorial fraternity or “brothers at jihad” between non state actor perpetrators responsible for the ceaseless butcheries in the State and Muslim dominated state actor security chiefs and drafted field law enforcement personnel including military officers and their field combatants.
“These have led to incessancy of ‘medicine-after-death’ security approaches and highly biased protection and response ratios allocated to the perpetrator-groups and the victim communities. The biased disposition of the drafted security forces including the Kaduna State Police Command has become so pronounced that even when the victim-communities or groups address the media and reel out irrefutable statistics of attacks against them, the State Police Command which has failed woefully to prevent the attacks or arrest and punish the attackers, will turn around to threaten the victim groups including labeling their reeled out statistics as “fake news”; with threats to arrest and detain their leaders.
“Realistically speaking, the Nigerian security forces and NPF led law enforcement agencies are far from being neutral and secularly disposed in their responses (if any) to the ongoing anti Christian butcheries in Southern Kaduna; to the extent that several reports and credible accusations abound saying that at harmless protests by the victim groups against incessant massacre of their fellow Christian natives and destruction or burning of their properties including worship and learning centers, the security forces and law enforcement officers will turn around and open fire on them with live bullets-while turning blind eyes on the perpetrator groups.
“Apart from several eyewitnesses accounts accusing the Jihadist Herdsmen attackers of dressing in military uniforms during such butcheries, eyewitnesses and survivors have also alleged severally of “seeing military personnel taking sides including shielding the attackers to safety” and arriving the scenes of the butcheries hours after they are perpetrated. Sometimes, if not in many occasions, they are accused of turning their weapons and bestiality against the victim groups or communities. It is therefore part of our call that the NPF High Command should use field and ICT intelligence to monitor the alleged nefarious conducts of the military officers and personnel stationed (if any) in the troubled areas.”