Taraba Community Rejects Army Report On Herdsmen Killings

The Jukun Development Association of Nigeria (JDAN) has described a report by the Nigerian Army on the herdsmen killings in Taraba state as a “shoddy job fit for the waste bin”.

Recall that the army had set up a panel to probe allegation that some soldiers conspired in the slaughter going on in some parts of the state where Fulani herdsmen were allegedly killing farmers and innocent villagers.

Buratai had said there was no truth in the allegations, urging the people to have confidence in the soldiers posted to the area to defend them against the rampaging Fulani herdsmen.

However, JDAN National President Chief Bako Benjamin, in a press conference in Ikoyi, Lagos, on Tuesday, said the Army merely engaged in “empty rhetoric” of setting up of panels to cleanse themselves of wrong doings.

He lamented that the army has again failed to give hope of justice, to the families of the innocent farmers and other villagers hacked down by the herdsmen.

According to him, “the Nigerian Army yet again missed another opportunity to cleanse itself of allegations of gross abuse leveled against them not only by Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma but by a number of other human rights organisations including Amnesty International (AI).

“The Nigerian army panel did a very poor and unprofessional job and wasted the opportunity to scribble their names in gold. The report is unacceptable to Jukun people and therefore it is hereby rejected in its entirety,” he said.

He wondered why the principal characters (Fulani herdsmen) accused of precipitating the crisis that gave birth to General Danjuma’s allegations was never mentioned in the report.

The panel, he further stated, almost completely avoided the main subject of the matter which is the attacks and killing of farmers and innocent villagers, but was addressing porous borders and past misunderstandings between brothers in a deliberate attempt to stir up tempers and portray Jukuns as historically troublesome.

“It is also curious that the panel deliberately refused to use a single material out of the hundreds of documented paper works, audio and video recordings of eyewitnesses, community leaders and youth groups with shocking and gruesome evidences of ethnic cleansing and genocide in more than 20 villages across southern Taraba,” he said.

Benjamin said Amnesty International’s claims and conclusions against the Nigerian Army are not far-fetched.

“The Nigerian army must come to terms with the enormous responsibility that rest on their shoulders to keep this country united, it must also realise that it owes Nigerian citizens a duty to be unbiased and thoroughly professional under a democratic government. It must completely shun the temptation to play to the gallery,” he added.