Popular Lagos lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, would by next Monday, April the 25th, file a case of genocide and ethnic cleansing at the International Court of Justice, ICJ, in The Hague and the ECOWAS Court against Fulani herdsmen for their continued massacre of the innocent people and farmers in Jukunland, of Southern and Central Taraba State, in North Eastern part of Nigeria.
The Human Rights lawyer, however, charged the Federal Government to take urgent and drastic action against the massacre being perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen against innocent farmers before they throw the nation into another avoidable civil war.
Expressing shock at the scale of the “unprecedented massacre of unarmed farmers” being killed by these herdsmen in Jukunland in Taraba State and the other parts of North Central Nigeria on a daily basis, he described the act as “a mindless pogrom.”
Falana spoke when he received the leaders of the Jukun Development Association of Nigeria who had come to his office to submit a 1000 page document detailing the targeted cleansing of their people by the rampaging herdsmen.
According to him, “It is very clear by the pictorial and other evidence contained in this evidence that the people of the North Central Nigeria are going through terrible things daily in the hands of these herdsmen. Lives and properties are no longer safe from these people who killed and maim, and rape women at will just because they wanted their cattles to graze on other people’s farmlands.”
The rights activist, therefore, charged the Federal Government to move security agencies to the North Central state of Taraba in order to protect the lives of innocent Nigerians who are being killed in their farmlands everyday by blood sucking herdsmen, before the people resort to self help.
While submitting the document, the National President of the Jukun Development Association of Nigeria Mr Benjamin Bako, urged Falan to fight for the right of the Jukun people and other tribes to live in their ancestral homelands peacefully, wondering why President Muhammadu Buhari has kept mute all this while despite the avalanche of security report that must have been reaching him concerning the deteriorating development in Southern Taraba.
Bako called on Nigerians and the international community to stand up and condemn the genocide and ethnic cleansing ongoing in Southern Taraba in North Central Nigeria, before it spread to other parts of the country.
He said the association has since submitted copies of the document to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other rights organisations around the world.
Bình luận