From Magnus Eze, Enugu
The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has described the gruesome massacre of over 150 persons from some communities in the Barkin Ladi, Mangu and Bokkos local government areas of Plateau State by gunmen on Tuesday, as genocide.
President General of the apex Igbo body, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, said that he received the awful news with rude shock in his Attah village, in Ikeduru local government of Imo State, where he was spending the Christmas holidays.
A statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Dr. Alex Ogbonnia, obtained on Wednesday, said that the Igbo leader qualified the killings, burning of houses, indiscriminate shootings and displacing of residents as an orchestrated act of genocide.
He wondered why in this modern age and civilization, Nigeria was still posting the brutish, cruel and barbaric news of mass killings of such magnitude.
The Igbo leader lamented that the federal government has refused to heed the Ohanaeze Ndigbo call for restructuring and State Policing System as a panacea for the incessant losses of lives and property in the various states of the country.
Iwuanyanwu added that it has become very obvious that the federal security architecture has proved very ineffective for the country’s diverse demography.
According to him, Iwuanyanwu reiterated that such heinous and cowardly killings have persisted because in the past the perpetrators of such savage acts often went unpunished.
He, therefore, urged President Bola Tinubu to do everything possible to bring to book those behind the callous crime in Plateau State.
He, then, directed the Igbo leadership in Plateau State to extend all forms of solidarity with the immediate families of the deceased, the displaced and the sundry victims of the catastrophe.
On behalf of all the sons and daughters of Igbo, the Ohanaeze leader extended his condolences to the governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang; the good people of Plateau State and the Middle Belt Forum led by Dr. Bitrus Pogu.
He prayed the Almighty to grant the souls of the deceased a blissful repose in His bosom.