THE National President of the Middle-Belt Forum, MBF, Dr. Pogu Bitrus, in this interview with Vanguard, exposes why the killings in the middle-belt have persisted. He also claims that religion is being used as a weapon to garner support to dispossess the indigenous people of the land for strangers to occupy. Excerpts:
There have been a spate of killings in the middle belt and it keeps escalating by the day. What is your take on it and what is being done by your people?
Let me start by answering the second part of the question. What we will do is going to be, as for now, a secret which we will not disclose till you see the result. So, I’ve answered that one. With regards to the killings, as far as we are concerned, it is deliberate. Whether people politically want to destabilize, it has nothing to do with our business.
Our business is our people are being killed. The false narrative which they paraded in the past, every Nigerian now knows there is nothing like a herdersfarmers’ conflict. People organise, terrorize our people, kill them while they are asleep, and then even occupy their land, pushing them to IDP camps. So what we’ll do is something, as I told you, is up to us. We’ll not disclose till you start seeing the results. But all I can say is we have lamented for too long.
There have been no proactive actions to curb the killings. Instead, the news we hear is more killings
That is true and that is why I said we have lamented for too long. Responses, in whichever way, must be strategic, have to be planned, must be organised. But what I’m saying is just wait. Whatever our response would be, you would see it soon. They said there’s a new terrorist group that is doing it. Some say there are foreign mercenaries. These things have always been the same.
The people who attack Nigerians have always had foreign participants. It’s not a new thing. Even the Fulani we’re talking about, they are not all Nigerians. But you see, only you cannot go into a terrain unknown to you if you are a foreigner. You must walk with Nigerians to be able to know the terrain and be able to operate. You can’t also rule out Nigerian sponsorship because these people are not ghosts. They are individuals and they’re mostly people who supply arms, ammunition, and logistics to them. Who must also be Nigerians. So, the fact that, yes, these people have foreign elements is not a new thing. It has always been there even with Boko Haram and other insurgent groups. And one thing we know is, if the Federal Government which is responsible for the security forces, that is also responsible for ensuring that the territorial integrity of Nigeria is maintained and sustained, isn’t doing a job well, and then of course Nigerians will have to wake up and do the needful. The constitution allows everybody to defend himself. And our people will have to stand up to the issue.
Could it be that the problem is overwhelming the military?
I don’t agree with that. You know, you cannot say a riff-raff insurgent group can overwhelm a military like Nigerian military, with Air Force, Army, and all the logistical supports. Most of these people even go on motorbikes. A few of them use gun trucks. Yes, they do use antiaircraft guns to have longer range to overwhelm our military, who mostly use AK-47s. But the military has Air Force. The military has capabilities of surveillance, which is beyond these people. All I can say is that there are subversive forces even within the system that prefer to undermine the Nigerian Government and Nigerian security forces, giving these people some leeway.
I mean, all these years of challenges by the insurgents, if our military cannot have adequate drones and surveillance machinery to be able to spot them before they even take off, then it is very sad. You can say they are more subversive rather than the military being incapable of doing the job. If the military wants todo the job, it can be done in a short while. They have the capacity. They have equipment that these people don’t have. And they have an upper hand at any given time if they wish to use the facilities they have.
Now, some people are saying that some indigenous people give information to these terrorists, who work in tandem with them. That is also quite true. The indigenous work in two ways: Some of them give information to our security forces. I mean, that is natural. The security forces have intelligence officers. Some may be even moving around as hawkers, but well-trained, welleducated intelligence officers.
The insurgents also have their informants who pass information to them. You know, look, when sentiments are being used in some cases, sentiments of religion, telling people that fighting these people means a jihad; such sentiments would allow some of the indigenous people to work and cooperate with the insurgents. However, the bottom line is that a Nigerian is a Nigerian, whether he’s a Christian, a Muslim or a traditional worshipper, is a Nigerian. Fortunately, in the South-West, they have been able to have a good understanding among themselves. Nobody cares whether you are a Muslim, Christian, a traditional religious worshipper or whatever. The first thing they put is being Yoruba. In the North-East, it’s a different thing. In the North, some people right from the word go, some 200 years ago, exploited religion to subdue others. And that exploitation is still there. Some people feel you need to identify to be even at the same level in society. And with this kind of norm and behaviour, we find informants here and there who work on sentiments rather than on principles and the survival instinct that everyone should support and embrace.
If this is on the sentiment of religion, how come they also attack mosques and Muslims?
From the word go, I listened to Shekau before he was terminated. When Shekau attacked or his team attacked, he would release a video where he first appeared on the scene after the departure or the passing on of their first leader, Mohammed Yusuf. He said in the video, which was in Hausa, that any Muslim who assists unbelievers in the fight, which they claim was a religious one, or is a religious one, would also be annihilated or terminated or whichever term one would want to use. So, when they see a Muslim sect that is not cooperating or that is either supporting government’s stance on issues or that its members are suspected of aiding and abetting whatever government or security forces are doing, such people become targets. Then, of course, there are those other aspects where ethnic considerations play a part. If Fulani has been the militia and there is a predominantly Hausa mosque, these Fulanis may attack that mosque because they see the Hausas who have vigilantes attacking them or fighting against them as targets. So, it becomes very complex when you find them attacking mosques too and equally claiming that they are fighting a religious war.
So, these complications are there but when you look, you have to find reasons considering the individual case in question. What it means is that these insurgents are using religion to manipulate the uneducated, including the educated. It depends on how you interpret something. You can tell me for example as a Christian about the coming Antichrist and ordinarily, someone would say yeah, the Antichrist according to the Bible would come out of the defunct, I mean reorganised defunct Roman Empire. But the Roman Empire was so big, covering up to the Middle East, to the Asia Minor, northern part of Africa and it could come from anywhere. So, it depends on how somebody interprets what he reads and whether or not somebody gets proper historical perspective of what he is reading. So, somebody might say jihad means standing for your religious beliefs. Another person would say jihad means attacking unbelievers and either they convert, or you annihilate them. Another person would say yes, my religion says I shouldn’t kill for religion or there is no forceful conversion of anybody. So, it all depends on perspective and interpretation. We have this kind of radicalism coming into Islam lately and though it has always been there, it’s becoming more violent right from the Middle East coming to Africa, parts of Europe and all that. So those elements, those teachings seem to be carrying the day more than the idea of peace which to me, doesn’t fall to water because it is only those people who pronounce peace who can be said to be proponents of peace. But what we see there is violence. What is strange is that these foreigners will enter a country and penetrate easily. And the security, the border, Immigration, Customs, are all there and they don’t know how they come or how they go. Our borders are porous and our system especially in the north, is such that you can come from Sudan and just blend if you play along with Nigerians. They don’t mind whoever you are. And such people can just come in and blend with society using religion as a standpoint for blending and he just moves on comfortably.
The same thing isn’t obtainable in the South because in the South religion has never been the main issue of unity. It’s either ethnic or some political interests. In the north, the binding factor in the past right up to independence and now, is religion. So, when some people say the north, they don’t mean some of us in the middle belt who are either Christians or traditional religious worshippers. They just feel as appendages of the north rather than the proper north. So, when a foreigner who is a Muslim comes in, he blends in and he is accepted. So that is how it works.
Somehow some people are also trying to attach these killings to what happened in Edo recently.
The killing of the hunters… That is totally wrong, and I don’t accept that as terrorism. One reason one might think of is one that the cry against Tinubu’s government from the far north has been louder than anything we’ve ever seen. And one could say that yes, Jonathan had his share of such things, including lots of blackmail, even associating him with what the north was doing. So, one would say yes, insurgency could be used to undermine the current government.
VANGUARD.
