Honorable Jonathan Asake is the National President of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU). Asake states why the umbrella body of the Southern Kaduna area is not interested in the peace process orchestrated by some stakeholders and gives his own panacea on what is necessary to bring peace to the area. In this interview with BABA NEGEDU in Kaduna, he says there can only be a peace move when there are clashes between communities, saying what is happening is an unprovoked attack on innocent communities

Before now, there was a cessation of attacks in the Southern Kaduna area, but of recent there was a resurgence of clashes. What is responsible for this?

Let me first correct the impression that what is happening is not clashes at all, what is going on is not clashes, but unprovoked attack by Fulani terrorists on peaceful and defenseless communities of Southern Kaduna and the recent one started on Sunday and they continued on Monday in a community called Kurmin Masara. The first day they went there by 3 am and attacked the community and killed 11 people that night. The next day six dead bodies were picked in the bush and the following day that was on Tuesday, they attacked again and killed five people and six people are still uncounted for, that what actually happened. In Kaura Local Government area specifically in Kagoro, they also went to a community there and attacked the people and burnt houses, but the youths of the community resisted them. After that they went and blocked the road and stopped students of the College of Education, Gidan Waya, because that is their route and gun down two students and several others were wounded, but one died instantly and the other who is critically injured and is receiving treatment in Jos. An old man who was coming back from his farm was also gunned down and they seriously injured some women that were found in the farm, this is what happened in the southern part of Kaduna in the last three days and there about.

During the Christmas season there was no killing. So we were celebrating that the killings has stopped, but all of a sudden there is an upsurge in the attacks again. We don’t know what exactly is happening. The killings had stopped, only the kidnapping that was going on in our communities.

These attacks have been going on for some time now, we also know of peace efforts by some stakeholders, why is this peace move not stopping these attacks?

The peace efforts has yielded nothing, so far those peace arrangements or peace meetings that they are having are just a kind of cosmetic, it is to divert attention from the real thing that is happening. The government has come up with false narrative that it was a herder and farmers clash when these atrocities were going on. They also used words like reprisal attacks, but these are just diversionary from the real issues, the genocide that is going on in our communities. Who are the perpetrators of this genocide, again they gave them a very diversionary name or distraction name, and they called them bandits. But we knew that they were Fulani herdsmen, killer Fulani herdsmen. There have been these agitations for long to designate them as terrorists because everything they were doing was terrorism. They had shut down a fighter plane, a Nigerian Air Force fighter plane; they had gone into the Nigerian Defense Academy premises and killed military officers, kidnapped a major. They had done so many things and yet the government was unwilling to designate them as terrorists, until there was tremendous pressure and until at the end a courageous judge declared them as terrorists. Even after the judge declared them as terrorists, the government was still unwilling to gazette it, until again there was pressure for a long time before the Attorney General of the federation agreed to gazette them as terrorists. You could see that in 2017, immediately the government declared IPOB as a terrorist organization even when they had not shut down any military aircraft, even when they had not gone into any military institution to perpetrate atrocities, even when they had not gone into communities to attack innocent people, but they were immediately branded as terrorists. So there is no real political will by the government of the day to really fight this menace of killer Fulani herdsmen and probably because the president is Fulani, and most of the key officers in this government are Fulani and that is why there is foot dragging to deal with them and they continue to maim and destroy crops in communities and rape women and kidnap people for huge ransom, that is the situation today.

Based on what is happening, has SOKAPU put together a peace initiative to bring about an end to the killings?

This is what I keep saying. If it was an affray situation, SOKAPU is an umbrella organization of about 67 ethnic nationalities. In Southern Kaduna we have different tribal groups, we have Hausa, Atyap, Bajju, Igbo, Yoruba, and Fulani among many others, and all these tribes are not fighting one another. What we have is that people come in the night at the wee hours and enter communities, unprovoked, without any previous fight or disagreement with the communities and they begin to kill and destroy, maim and burn down food crops and cart away food crops, the highest level of crime against humanity and we want to call it a clash? If it was a clash then you will see one community against another, but this is not the case. If it were, we will have called the leaders of this community and mediate between them, find out what is wrong and tell them to cease fire. It is a deliberate thing to call it a clash to divert attention of the world from the real genocide that is happening in Southern Kaduna that is what I’m trying to say. There can only be a peace move when it is a clash, but this one is not a clash. If you want to initiate peace, with who, the people that come to kill us at night? Yes, we have identified them as mercenary, foreign Fulanis that come in the night, connive with the local Fulanis to kill people so they need to be brought to book, it is not about peace, when you seek for peace, those that come as leaders of the Fulanis to seek for peace, do they know the people that come to kill us in the night? If they know the people it then means the problem is solved, they should be brought to justice, because they have committed serious crime against humanity. This is mass murder, when people go under this deception of peace meeting by people that are claiming they don’t know the killers, but they come and represent the people. On several occasions, the Atyap community, that is the paramount ruler of Atyap people had had those meetings in his palace with a group of Fulani representatives that claimed to represent those that come to kill. Because they have been identified as Fulani people, but immediately after those peace meetings, there will always be attacks. I can give examples of several attacks that have taken place after the peace meetings. Just last year after that type of peace meeting conveyed by the paramount ruler of the Atyap people, after the meeting over 50 people were killed on the Atyap side. So SOKAPU cannot go and preside over a peace meeting that we do not know the aggressors, if we know the aggressors, then we can ask them what they want, but we don’t know them, but people come to represent them. So we know it is a cosmetic arrangement; it does not solve the problem. I know it is the government of the state that always say people must go into a peace meeting because, they have been using the narrative of a clash between communities which is not true. Instead of fishing out the perpetrators of this crime against humanity and bring them to justice, they will not do that, they will want to do cosmetic peace meetings which has never solved the problem.

From what you have said, what is the way forward; how can we stop these killings?

The way forward like I said is that the government of the day, at the state and federal levels must develop the political will to deal with this situation. The military are willing to fish out the perpetrators of these atrocities, but there is always a restraining force. Reports have always had it by community members where you see security agencies dotted all over the community, when these attacks are going on in the wee hours of the night and people are crying, houses are being burnt, people are running with their children and are being hark down and you will find out that the security is unwilling to move in there to help. So there is always some kind of restraining forces, the security agencies should be empowered, encouraged and motivated to do, their work. The community people themselves should also be empowered to form a joint partnership with the security people to keep a kind of joint civilian task force, so that they can keep vigilance over the community. If the communities are empowered they will be able to resist these killers. If the terrorists know that they can be resisted they will not go there, that is what was done in Burkina Faso, when the government could not provide security for every communities and the Jihadists were ravaging every community, the government decided to empower the communities to be able to withstand and resist the terrorists. This can also be done here. Also several communities have been displaced, they cannot go to their farms, their children have been out of school, they don’t have medical attention, these communities are dying in hunger, and the government should give attention to such communities. The government should take food and medication; give them accommodation where they could be accommodated. Government must have a plan to restore these communities back to their home land where they were chased from in the first place. In some areas, the terrorists that have chased the members of the communities have taken over the areas. The government should as a matter of necessity, bring justice by apprehending those that are responsible for the attacks that is what the government can do. Because the basic reason for the existence of government anywhere in the world is for security and wellbeing of the people. Once people are secured and you provide them with welfare, they can go about their activities, go to their farms, and let them know that they are safe, but today many farmers cannot go to their farm. This shows that there is going to be food insecurity in the country. Most framers in the Middle Belt, in Benue, in Plateau, in Southern Kaduna in Nasarawa in Niger, in Taraba, you know central Nigeria is actually the food basket of Nigeria and if these farmers cannot access their farms, they are being killed, asked to pay taxes before accessing their farms, then you can imagine what will happen in the next few years about the food shortages that we are going to experience.

Fulanis and Yoruba muslims are a cancer to any society.