By Abdul Abdul, Jos
Governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, on Thursday declared that the killings in Bokkos Local Government Area (LGA) of the State where over 52 persons in the affected communities were killed was not a clash between the herders and the farmers but a “brazen terrorist activity. It is nothing but genocide.”
Governor Mutfwang, who spoke at the maiden Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) Plateau Business Coalition For Health (PBC Health) Summit in Jos, said the attacks were carried out by professionals who did not want the State to grow by targeting when farmers are to go to their farms and they will attack again during the time of harvesting their crops.
According to the governor: “What happened in Bokkos is not a crisis. It is not a community attacking a community. It was a brazen terrorist activity. It is nothing but genocide. And I mean every word I used.
“It was an attempt to wipe out a whole people not just wipe out their lives but also to wipe out their existence entirely. And today nobody has been contacted with having to bury over 50 dead people. We are facing a humanitarian challenge as people have fled their homes and living in Internally Displaced Person’s camps (IDPs). This is a huge challenge to us.”
He said that whatever happened their spirits will not be cajoled but that they would remain undaunted and committed to finding lasting solutions to the situations that have bedeviled them since the outset of the democratic dispensation of the fourth republic.
“One of the patterns we discovered is that at the onset of the farming season, these senseless attacks happen to intimidate our people not to go to farms. And even when they manage to go to farms, by the time the harvest season sets in, these attacks resume.
“That tells you that this is deliberate. This is orchestrated. This is a palgrom that is somewhere and is properly executed. This tells you that there is a high level of professionalism in the whole thing,” the Governor stressed.
He argued that the time for political correctness is over where people should call a spade a spade.
“I want to appeal to our people especially those from the social media to respect the dead. When things are said, do not take them out of context. We were deceived of this narrative of farmers-herders clash.
“What happened in Bokkos over the last two weeks was not a clash. It was an attack. The first attack was a community that was observing a wake-keep. And I don’t know how people observing a wake-keep will go into a clash. They were simply attacked and many lives were lost.
“We pray to God that we will see the end of this series of attacks,” he stated.
Mutfwang expressed the State’s gratitude to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who had shown his commitment and concerns in backing them up to find a solution to the carnage, adding that by the grace of God, solutions will be found.
Chairman of the occasion, Ambassador Bagudu Hirse, congratulated the Governor for the honour done to him by the Sun Newspapers as one of the best Governors in Nigeria.
Hirse said that the health sector in Plateau faces a significant and heavy challenge, adding that the state should partner with private sectors to revive the dying health sector in the State.
Chairman of NMA in the State, Dr. Yilji Cashmir Kumtap, who was excited for massive turn-out, adding that the over-reliance of the health sector on government has caused some compromise slowly but steadily allowing in more aspects mediocrity to creep in to a point where it has become their standard operating system.