A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has suggested to the incoming federal administration to prioritise practical and fool-proof disarming of Fulani insurgents who are waging war against farming communities.

HURIWA also told the President-elect, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that the quantum of military grade weapons in the possession of Fulani herdsmen in the different forests spread across the country, could be used to threaten the stability and blackmail his administration intermittently.

According to the group, the best approach for the next government to free itself from the gangsterism and terrorism of armed Fulani herdsmen, was to forensically disarm them and prosecute their known sponsors in the current federal government.

“For lasting peace to reign, for national stability and national security, the incoming President must take transparent, open, comprehensive and speedy steps to crush the ongoing Fulani insurgency and armed rebellion all across Nigeria, including the arrest, prosecution and punishment of highly placed government and military officials behind the arming, re-arming and procurement of military grade weapons being deployed by Fulani herdsmen to take over communities,” the group said in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko on Monday.

HURIWA specifically listed indigenous Christian communities of Southern Kaduna and Tiv speaking communities of Benue State as having lost their native farms to armed Fulani invaders.

The rights group alleged that the outgoing administration of President Muhammadu Buhari incubated, motivated, and tolerated the growing army of Fulani herdsmen who have constituted the second largest threat to Nigeria’s national security since 2015 and were responsible for the massacre of over 10,000 farmers across Nigeria.

It added that armed Fulani terrorists also made kidnappings for cash payments to become huge franchises in Nigeria which the incoming administration must dislodge without further ado.

Besides, HURIWA listed the government of Kaduna State as one of the few state governments, including Bauchi State Governor, as persons who have defended the right of Fulani herdsmen to bear arms, pointing out that armed Fulani herdsmen have continued to kill, including the latest incident of killing an ECWA Pastor and 38 other Christians who were residents of Takalafia and Gwanja communities in the Karu Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, last weekend.

HURIWA recalled that the Pastor-in-charge of the Evangelical Church Winning All in the area, Rev. Daniel Danbeki, and 37 others were gruesomely murdered by the assailants during the attack which lasted from 9 pm on Thursday night till the early hours of Friday.

HURIWA reminded the President elect of the existence of empirical evidence of the existence high profile sponsors of the Fulani herdsmen inside of the topmost echelons of the President Buhari’s administration, just as Fulani herdsmen have claimed that the government supplies them with weapons.

HURIWA recalled that in a viral video recorded during one of the several meetings between popular Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, one of the herdsmen, addressing the crowd, pointed out that cows don’t give birth to guns.

He said that they were only herdsmen and did not know what guns were until the government started supplying them with AK-47.

HURIWA condemned President Muhammadu Buhari for doing practically nothing to check the upsurge and the widening spectre of deadly attacks launched by his Fulani kinsmen all across Nigeria.

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