News

July 25, 2020

KADUNA: 300 killed in 200 days Rights Group alleges, wants CP redeployed

#EndSARS: We can’t guarantee security during yuletide ― Law enforcement officers

•NHRC calls for state, LG police

By Ikechukwu Odu

The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, (Intersociety) has  called on the   Inspector General of Police,  IGP Mohammed Adamu Abubakar to    urgently draft   special police detachments  to Southern Kaduna to stop ongoing massacre of Christians by suspected Islamic Jihadists in  the state.

The group equally alleged that 300 Christians have been massacred within 200 days , covering 1st January   to July 20, 2020 by the marauding Jihadists who have camouflaged as herdsmen in the affected communities.

This was made known in a   letter to the IGP, dated July  22, 2020.

The Letter, signed by the group’s four principal officers: Emeka Umeagbalasi, Board Chair, Barr Damaris Amaka Onuoha, Head of Campaign & Publicity, Barr Uju Igboeli, Head of Civil Liberties and Rule of Law and Barr  Ndidiamaka Bernard, Head of Int’l Justice and Human Rights, also called  on the   IGP to secure and protect  Nigerians  and without bias or soft spot for any ethnic  or religious grouping.

The IGP was also strongly urged to detect  and end the perceived raging culture of conspiratorial fraternity  or what they called “brothers at jihad” among the drafted security and law enforcement  agencies in Kaduna State.

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The group equally said “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.

“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.”

On the incessant killings, the group alleged that no fewer than 300 defenseless Christians have been killed within the first 200 days of 2020.

According to the group “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, if not 139 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 minimum of 300 and the rest of the country 626 killings or Christian deaths.

“Till date, too, the whereabouts of the 32 Christians mostly men and others abducted by the invading Jihadists on 16th July 2020 in Mai-ido and other neighbouring villages in Kachia Local Government Area of Kaduna State have remained unknown, raising strong fears of their possible death in the captivity of  Jihadist Herdsmen.

Vanguard