Nigeria: In a report this weekend CSW reports on “nightmare attacks” on the Irigwe ethnic group with at least 15 villages destroyed, over 400 houses burnt down, including churches and an orphanage with around 20,000 people displaced and thousands of hectares of farm crops deliberately destroyed
The assailants also attacked Ungwan Magaji, Kishicho, Kigam and Kikoba Irigwe villages in Kaura LGA, southern Kaduna, where at least 48 people were killed, over 100 homes were razed to the ground and at least 68 farmlands were destroyed, according to the president of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), Hon. Jonathan Asake.
Attacks by well-armed assailants of Fulani origin on farming communities in central Nigeria, which have been ongoing since 2010, increased in both geographical scope and ferocity in 2015, with perpetrators enjoying apparent impunity due to inadequate official intervention.
One spokesman told CSW that “Many of the villages, where these killings and burnings are taking place, are basically located behind the 3rd Armoured Division Barrack of the Nigerian Army, yet, these militias are allowed to continue their heinous murders and carnage without any intervention by the Nigerian Army and other security agencies[…], eroding the confidence of the populace in the military and security agencies, as unbiased protectors of all, devoid of tribe, ethnicity or religion.”
Moreover, “No single AK-47 wielding militia” has been arrested prosecuted or brought to justice; instead “the indigenous youth who tried to defend themselves with crude instruments are paraded as aggressors.”
Deadly attacks by Fulani assailants are now occurring increasingly in the south of the country, amidst consistent reports of abductions for ransom, murders, displacements and destruction and occupation of farmlands.
On 1 August at least nine people were killed in the Isi-Uzo LGA of Enugu State, including a pregnant woman whose foetus was removed and left on top of her corpse. In another indication of questionable behaviour on the part of the security services, local people claim that the police, who arrived 24 hours after the latest attack had ended, were refusing to release the bodies of victims of an earlier attack for burial until the local community signs an undertaking to allocate land to Fulani herders.
