Riyom Youth Council in Plateau State has lamented that communities in Riyom Local Government Area have lost 58 persons and 81 houses to incessant attacks in the past one month.
The party added that 31 other persons sustained varying degrees of injuries, while 15,000 were displaced from their homes.
Addressing a press conference in Jos, Chairman of Riyom Youth Council, Comrade Zang Kefas Davou called on the federal government to intervene and bring a halt to the killings.
In a related development, suspected herdsmen on Tuesday launched an attack on Agatu and Apa local government areas in Benue State, leaving several people dead.
The attack occurred in Edikwu-G’Icho, a community in Apa Local Government Area, where three youths were ambushed and killed.
According to a source in Agatu Local Government Area, one Sunday Dutse, the younger brother of a former chairman of the local government council, was killed along the Odugbeho-Ogbaulu road.
Davou said, “For over two decades, since the year 2002, Riyom Local Government Area has been subjected to a relentless and systematic campaign of violence, solely perpetrated and orchestrated by armed Fulani militias.
“This dreaded campaign has been mostly characterised by unprovoked attacks, resulting in the senseless and brutal murder of thousands of our people in cold blood.
“Our once thriving communities have been reduced to rubble, with properties worth billions of Naira utterly destroyed, and the very sources of our people’s livelihoods, particularly our farmlands and farm produce, completely destroyed.
“The economic and social fabric of our communities have been torn apart, with over 82 houses and properties worth millions of Naira deliberately burnt and destroyed.
“This orchestrated violence have also led to the brazen grabbing of our ancestral lands with no attempts for reversal in spite of the existence of several legal frameworks to address same.
“The marauding activities of these armed militias have continued to dispossess indigenous communities of their heritage and means of survival, and displacing several into lives of destitution and uncertainty.”
Davou added that some of the assailants were in possession of the cell phones of some of their victims.
He said large hectares of their cultivated farmlands, representing the very essence of their people’s sustenance, had been mowed down and decimated, even as “over 15,000 persons have been displaced from their homes, and are now living in precarious conditions without shelter and food.”
The group demanded a massive and permanent deployment of security forces, particularly, troops of Nigeria Mobile Police Force (MOPOL) across all vulnerable communities in Riyom to gather intelligence that will help their operation at wiping out the attackers.
The chairman of Riyom Youth Council stated, “We call on the Inspector General of Police, the Chief of Defence Staff, Director General of Department of State Services and the Attorney General of the Federation to purposefully collaborate to ensure that justice is not only done but seen to be done with the view to ending the impunity.”
Seriki Adinoyi and George Okoh
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