MBF raises alarm as killings escalate in North central

From Noah Ebije, Kaduna

The Middle Belt Forum (MBF) has cried out in anguish, warning Nigeria and the international community that an orchestrated campaign of genocide is unfolding across North central of the country.

The alarm comes in the wake of last Tuesday’s gruesome massacre of 13 Berom natives in Rachas village, Heipang District of Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State.

A statement by the spokesman of the Forum, Mr. Luka Binniyat, said  the violence bears all the hallmarks of genocide as defined by the United Nations Convention on Genocide; mass killings, forced displacements and the destruction of ethnic and religious communities.

The MBF described the killing as part of a “systematic, organised and sustained” plot to wipe out indigenous Middle Belt communities.

“What is happening is not mere banditry,  it’s a renewed jihad aimed at erasing our people, seizing our lands, and destroying our identity,” said the statement.

Across the six states of the North Central zone  and beyond,  the MBF paints a blood-soaked map of over  6,000 killed and two million displaced in Benue alone, 1,200 murdered in Plateau in just five months (April–August 2023), more than 3,500 dead in Southern Kaduna since 2015.

“Entire towns in Taraba, Gombe, Adamawa, Nasarawa and Kogi are under siege. Over 400 communities sacked in Niger State, now branded “ungoverned spaces. From Boko Haram and ISWAP in the northeast to Fulani militias in the central belt, the attackers are the ideological descendants of 19th-century jihadists, now armed with rocket launchers and state-level impunity.”

While stopping short of accusing the Nigerian government of officially sponsoring the terror, the MBF blasted federal and state authorities for “moral and political complicity” through years of deadly silence, impunity, and double standards.

“While killers are celebrated and pardoned, our people are arrested for trying to defend their homes,” the MBF lamented, adding, “the government’s failure to act is a green light for genocide.”