The Southern Kaduna people under the ambit of the Southern Kaduna Leadership Council (SKLC), have called on the Federal Government and the international community to immediately commence probe into the cases of genocide in their communities under the former Governor Nasir El-Rifai’s Government.

The group also requested for protection from the government of Kaduna State, the Federal Government, African Union and the United Nations.

The Chairman of SKLC, Ishaya Dary Akau, in a statement yesterday, lamented the ordeal facing the Southern Kaduna indigenes who were disposed of their lands and suffered loss of their sons and daughters in the hands of Fulani militias.

“We call on the international community to constitute a visitation panel to ascertain the genocide orchestrated and supervised under the Islamist regime run by Nasir El Rufai as Governor of Kaduna State between 2015 and 2023.”

He remarked: “We now know that propaganda by certain disgruntled elements in our midst has had the tacit support of government. The Southern Kaduna Leadership Council, and indeed the people of Southern Kaduna will not use the statements of Nasir El Rufai to determine how we live and relate with Muslims, settlers or visitors to Southern Kaduna.

“We are a peaceful people and will follow peaceful and lawful means in pursuit of our goal of surviving as a people under the regime of hostility and hate instituted and handed down as a legacy by Nasir El-Rufai in Kaduna State. However, we will not fail to tell our people to defend their lives, lands and heritage.”

According to him, “the Southern Kaduna Leadership Council, desirous of developing harmonious and peaceful relations with all the citizens and people of Kaduna State”, just as he called on the present government not to follow the path of their predecessor.”\

Akau said: “The Southern Kaduna Leadership Council (SKLC) held its regular meeting on the 17th June, 2023, and considered several important matters, including the speech by Mal. Nasir El-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, delivered to some religious clerics. The SKLC noted that the video of Nasir El-Rufai’s speech has gone viral and has made public certain issues that have hitherto remained in the domain of conjecture and hypothesis among Nigerians generally, but which we the victims of El-Rufai’s actions have lived and experienced over a period of eight years.”

He explained that “Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai set out deliberately to misinform the Nigerian Public and the world, and waged false propaganda amongst certain religious circles, to the effect that the people of Southern Kaduna who are mainly Christians did not vote for the APC.”

“The voting figures cast in Federal, State and Local Government elections in Kaduna State between 2015 and 2023 bear testimony to the fact that Nasir El-Rufai deliberately deceived those in the APC who are not Muslims of his actions.”

“The system of governance by exclusion practiced by El-Rufai was deliberate against the people of Southern Kaduna. El-Rufai picked a Muslim deputy from Southern Kaduna to spite the Christian majority for not supporting the APC. The most insidious aspect of this El-Rufai Islamist agenda was his claim that he extended such a Muslim-Muslim system to the presidential election in order to extend the scope of Islamic subjugation across the length and breadth of Nigeria within twenty years.”

Akau continued: “The impoverishment of our people arising from the total neglect of the area in 8 years, and the deliberate destruction of farmlands, crops, plantations and forests, harvests and food stocks, in an orgy of terrorist violence were deliberate actions in pursuit of subordination of the people of Southern Kaduna to El-Rufai’s implementation of jihadism in Kaduna State.”

“The incessant killings and maiming of our children, women and youth, and the burning of our homes and destruction of our villages and communities from 2015 to 2023 was part of a strategy for Islamic dominance by the government of Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai in Kaduna Stathe assassinations, murders, kidnappings, arrests and imprisonment, and removal of indigenous Southern Kaduna traditional rulers, and the balkanization of our chiefdoms to create emirates out of districts under our traditional leaders, was part of an undeclared jihadist campaign being surreptitiously waged by Nasir El-Rufai as Governor of Kaduna State.

The removal of our traditional leaders and imposing foreign ones on the people of Southern Kaduna has been calculated to change the structure of traditional leadership in the region, and create conditions facilitate creation of new settlements of foreigners and change the demography of the area for El-Rufai’s Islamic Dominance.”

“The nation and international community should know that the Southern Kaduna region was recorded to have above 3,000,000 people by 2006, and present projections show that there are now above six million people in the area. The total land size of Southern Kaduna is above 26,000 square kilometres. Southern Kaduna is larger in population than 21 states in population, and larger in land size than 26 states in Nigeria. There are 58 ethnic groups in Southern Kaduna, with similar culture, traditions and beliefs.”(The Guardian)

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