…as Uromi women ask Fulanis to vacate their community
The Department of State Services, Nigeria’s spy police, has again threatened to deal with those it said are plotting to cause ethnic and religious violence in the country.
This is coming less than two weeks after the department raised an alarm over plans by some unidentified groups and persons to embark on a smear campaign against President Muhammadu Buhari.
It also came on the day that Uromi women in Edo State asked the Fulani herdsmen to vacate their communities.
DSS spoke Wednesday through a statement issued by its Public Relations Officer, Peter Afunanya, titled ‘DSS reiterates call against violence’ on Wednesday.
“The Department of State Services (DSS) hereby reminds the public of its earlier warnings about plans by persons and groups to exploit some fault lines to cause ethnoreligious violence in parts of the country,” the agency said in the statement.
“Latest developments indicate desperate efforts by these groups to subvert public order. In this regard, they have continued to resort to inciting, unguarded and divisive statements and acts. The objective is to pit citizens against one another in order to apparently inflame the embers of tribal and religious discords.
“For the umpteenth time, the Service strongly warns these elements to desist forthwith from their (planned) nefarious acts or face the full wraths of the law. However, the DSS will, in collaboration with other security and law enforcement agencies, take necessary steps to ensure the safety of lives and property of the citizenry.”
The warning from DSS is coming as calls for herdsmen to leave the southwest, Edo State, and even the southeast, are rising daily. The herdsmen have been accused in these places of being responsible for the rising incidents of killing, kidnapping, and rape.
In the South West, Ogun State issued an order for the herdsmen to vacate the government’s forest reserves, which it said the herdsman had converted to their den of criminality.
In Oyo State, the move to flush out the herdsmen has been led by a Yoruba rights activist, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, who had been joined by other leaders in the region.
Igboho’s house in Ibadan was razed last week, but that has not deterred him, as he has also led his anti-Fulani campaign to Ogun state. He has accused some prominent Yoruba leaders as “slaves” to the Fulanis, which has made it impossible for such leaders to speak out against the atrocities being committed by the herdsmen.
On the day the DSS issued its warning, women in Uromi, in Edo protested against the Fulanis living in their midst and demanded that they vacate their community.
Souting #FulanimustGo, the women lamented that the Fulani herdsmen now prevent them from going to their farms, for fear of being killed or raped by the bandits.
Across the regions in the south, east, and north-central, governors have banned open and night grazing by herders in their states as part of measures to curb the excesses of the herdsmen-turned-bandits.
