WorldStage Newsonline — Southern Kaduna people under the aegis of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union on Sunday accused the Kaduna State Govenor Nasir el-Rufai of being bias over the purported killing of 66 people in Kajuru Local Government Area of the state.
The governor had on Friday said 66 persons were killed by gunmen in eight villages in Kajuru, in Kajuru Local Government Area of the state.
El-Rufai, while appealing to the people of the state not to politicize the killing, SOKAPU, accused the governor of being bias over the matter.
SOKAPU said it was of the view that el-Rufai’s comments over the Kajuru killings was deliberately orchestrated to inflame ethnic and religious sentiments to produce yet another cycle of bloodshed.
The governor through his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwan, vowed that he would stop at nothing in to ensure that the perpetrators of the crime we’re brought to book.
The spokesman quoted the his principal to have stated this after he visited the scene of the incident.
The govenor, according to the statement, was accompanied on the visit by the security chiefs to the area.
The statement read, “Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has visited the scenes of the Kajuru killings. The governor was accompanied on the trip by Major-General Faruk Yahaya, GOC 1 Division of the Nigerian Army, Air Cmdr. I. Sani of the Nigerian Air Force, Police Commissioner Ahmad Abdurrahman and State Director of the SSS, A.I. Koya. The chairman of Kajuru local government council, Cafra Caino, also joined the governor on the visit.
“The Kaduna State Government notes the concerted and apparently coordinated efforts by bigoted busy bodies to deny the Kajuru killings, or to minimise the casualty figures, and the specious arguments being deployed in this despicable quest. The Kaduna State Government condemns in the strongest terms attempts to politicise the killings.
“Only irresponsible and insensitive people can recklessly dismiss the deaths of members of a community with whom they have no contact. Private individuals and unelected actors cannot be allowed to reduce weighty matters of state security to the province of their limited networks, inexperienced lenses and narrow agendas.
“The government of a state cannot be detained by parochial, ethno-religious, partisan or electoral calculations from doing its duty to provide security, confirm incidents of security breaches, take steps to reassure affected communities and ensure that perpetrators are arrested and brought to justice.”
However, SOKAPU through its Publicity Secretary, Yakubu Kuzamani, shot back at the governor, accusing him of religious bias.
The union said the Southern Kaduna people were still at loss as to the motive behind the governor’s outburst at such critical period in the history of the country.
On what led to the tragic incident, the union added, “On Sunday, February 10, 2019, the Adara natives residing in Ungwar Barde in Kufana District of Kajuru Local Government Area came under attack by gunmen suspected to be herdsmen. The attack lasted from 10pm of Sunday to 4am of Monday February 11, 2019.
“By the time the merchants of deaths and destructions were through with their mission, no fewer than 11 lives, including a pregnant woman, were lost. Scores of victims of the attack on Ungwar Barde sustained injuries, with some of them presently receiving treatment at some health facilities in the state capital. We have been informed that the attackers, seven of them in number, were arrested by a team of policemen.
“Following the Sunday attack on Ungwan Barde, residents of Ungwan Busa and Doruwa located in Kajuru LGA deserted their villages for safety. Presently, the District Head of Kufana and four of his village heads, on the directive of the governor, have been summoned to Kaduna and ordered to produce persons behind ‘reprisal attacks’. However, the monarchs have told their interrogators that they are unaware of any ‘reprisal attacks’ and, therefore, unable to identify persons behind such attacks. Apart from the 11 corpses of Adara natives that were killed during the Sunday attack, the community leaders have denied knowledge of any attack.
“Arising from the above, SOKAPU is shocked at the deliberate falsehood by el-Rufai who found it convenient not to inform the world of an earlier attack that claimed the lives of 11 Adara natives. SOKAPU is convinced that Governor el-Rufai is on an irrevocable journey of inflaming ethnic conflagration that has always been in line with his deliberate chronicle of profiling Southern Kaduna people as favourably disposed to violence.
“We wish to inform Nigerians and the world that it has always been in the character of the governor to promote violence through spreading hate speech for the advancement of his waning political survival. If the governor, who was aware that Adara natives were killed on Sunday, neglected to come public, then Nigerians and the world are well placed to understand the nebulous and evil motives of el-Rufai who once shocked Nigerians on national television that he had paid whopping sums of money to foreign herdsmen involved in attacking communities in Southern Kaduna.
“SOKAPU is calling on the Inspector General of Police and the Director of Department of State Service (DSS) to carry out an independent investigation and tell the world the truth of what actually happened in Kajuru. We are startled that it was the governor and not the police that announced the alleged killings in Kajuru. Let Nigerians and the world know that, should there be any breakdown of law and order in Kaduna state, Governor el-Rufai should be held responsible.”
Also, Adara Development Association, an umbrella body of the natives in Kajuru, gave their own version of what really transpired in the area.
In a statement entitled: “Adara Incident: the Facts Behind the Deliberate Lies”, and issued by association’s Assistant Secretary, Mr. Luke Waziri, said the people of Kajuru were shocked by the governor’s outburst over the incident when everything seemed to have settled down.
He accused the governor of deliberately churning out lies over the matter.
Said the statement, “In view of the unfortunate incidents that we are faced with in Adara land and the deliberate lies being manufactured against us as a people by the governor of Kaduna state, Malam Nasir el- rufai , we deem it necessary to state the facts and correct the official and deliberate lies.
“It has also become necessary to highlight the high handedness and mischievous manner that the governor of Kaduna state has been deploying against us as a people. Not satisfied with a deliberate attempt to balkanize our traditional institution and culture, the governor is currently trying to instigate a crisis in our area.
“On Friday 15th February 2019, on the eve of what would have been our national elections, we watched with shock the governor granting an interview that 66 people were allegedly killed in Kajuru, Kaduna state.
“The governor went ahead to list the number of villages that were attacked but deliberately excluded Ungwan Barde where our people were killed. He also gave the gender statistics of those allegedly killed and the tribe of the victims but again mischievously left out the 11 Adara people who were killed.
“He insinuated that the incident happened on the eve of the election. But the truth is that the incident took place between Sunday 10th February, to Tuesday 12 February 2019 in Ungwar Barde in Kufana District, where 11 innocent Adara people were earlier killed without any provocation.”
The district head of Kufana wrote an official report to the police about the incident. The member representing Kajuru in the Kaduna State House of Assembly also informed the government about the incident. Even the chairman of the Local government, Cafra Caino was also aware of the incident. But to our greatest surprise, the chairman did not take steps to set the records straight when lies were being spread against the people he leads.
He said, “We were shell shocked when on Friday the governor issued a statement about killings days after the dust had settled and the people themselves were working to understand the incident in order to find measures to address it.”
