Youth Groups issue ultimatum to FG over insecurity

Tunde Omolehin

The Coalition of Northern Youth Group, Sokoto state chapter has urged the Federal Government to end the escalating insecurity in the north or face citizens’ mass action.

The group in a communiqué after a one day conference held in Sokoto, promised to mobilise its members across the frontline states including the Federal capital territory to engage in protest at the expiration of a three-month ultimatum notice.

Spokesmen of the group, Isah Jabbi Usman and the state coordinator of Human Rights Monitored Network, Ibrahim Adamu Tudun Doki, said the protest will shut down all economic and social activities until the government puts a stop to the mass killings going on in the northern part of Nigeria.

It however blamed the activities of the outlawed volunteer Vigilantes group also known as Yan Sakai for the escalation of violence in most northwestern states.

The groups also blamed both the federal and state government for not acting promptly to tame the crime at its initial stage.

It also condemned what it called lack of meaningful roles for traditional rulers as a major contributing factor that allowed otherwise ordinary disputes that could be handled locally to turn to greater conflicts.

“The high-handedness and indiscrimination in the operations of self-appointed community police outfits as the Yan Sa Kai (volunteers) and Yan Banga (vigilante) who have constituted themselves into the complaint, prosecutors, judges and executors at the same time.

“An unholy alliance of village heads who are for all intents and purposes redundant, local police officials and lower court judges to arrest, detain and extort native pastoralists of their livestock and other assets, irrespective of whether they are part of crime committed or not”

The group noted that one of the reasons why the insecurity escalates in the region is initial levity and condescension with which the Federal and State governments in the North approached it by not properly diagnosing or appraising and appreciating the root cause of the conflict.

It said at no time did the state governments in the troubled zones engaged the aggrieved farming and herding communities, the Yan Sa Kai and Yan Banga to a honest discussion for reconciliation

It also criticizes the roles of community leaders, retired security experts and the general public for not promptly and holistically diagnosing the remote causes of the escalation of the situation “which started as mere conflict between two inseparable professions, farming and cattle herding.

The coalition however charges the Federal and State authorities to improve the quality of troop’s presence and equipment in these Northern communities and review the current tactics.