Plateau: ‘219 Corpses Recovered, 133,000 People Displaced’
A group in Plateau State, Women for Women and He for She, has urged the Federal Government to mobilise all retired security personnel that abound in the state and the nation, and whose experience can be harnessed to come up with a template to mitigate and nip future attacks in the bud.
The women group also called for total overhaul of the country’s security architecture, since according to it reports from various quarters indicate that the security apparatus has been compromised.
Addressing journalists, Saturday in Jos, state coordinator of the group, Dr. Jophia N. Gupar, said the nation deserves security officers that are trustworthy, while urging proper equipping of state-owned security outfit, Operation Rainbow, for effective presence in all the 17 local government councils of the state.
She said traditional rulers, community leaders, ward heads and women representatives should be integrated into the security architecture at all levels of governance, even as they called for the immediate arrest and prosecution of perpetrators of the violence and purveyors of hate speeches that have further aggravated the problems.
Also addressing journalists at the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Centre, Jos, the National President of Plateau Initiative for Development and Advancement of the Natives (PIDAN), Dr. Aboi JK Madaki, said though corpses were still coming in, the record so far showed that 219 bodies had been recovered in recent attacks in the state.
Madaki said 52 villages were sacked altogether, while 133,000 people were displaced in all the places attacked by suspected herdsmen, adding that the casualty figure given was based on estimation, because more corpses were still being recovered.
While noting that the systematic attacks and killings of innocent citizens have been on for a long time, but it became more intense in the months of May and June this year.
He condemned attacks on defenceless persons, saying such dastardly acts are callous, barbaric and inhuman.
