The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has accused Nigerian leaders of selfishness and nepotism, saying “the 2025 Easter Season was being celebrated amid continuing daunting existential socioeconomic, political and most worryingly, security and criminality challenges.”
The Forum which stated this while felicitating Nigerian Christians on the Easter celebration on Sunday, added that “communities in Benue, Borno, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, Plateau, Zamfara, and other states, are daily visited with debilitating and senseless deaths, destruction, dislocation, tears, and fractured intergroup relations.
“Adding to the tragedy are monstrous corruption, selfishness of leaders, nepotism, political insensitivity, inequities, impunity, lack of frugality, provocative and ostentatious lifestyles of political and other office holders, etc,”
The ACF, spokesperson, Professor Tukur Muhammad-Baba, in the statement prayed for the country’s return to peace, security and economic prosperity.
According to statement, “Doubtless, living conditions are dire, particularly in the northern states and in Nigeria in general. The needed public policy responses to the problems have been grossly inadequate and far from being effective and satisfactory.”
The ACF appealed to Christians brethren to continue to pray “for peace, security and economic recovery for Nigeria, for God’s intercession so that Nigeria’s leaders are re-endowed with faith, love for ordinary citizens and the wisdom to chart Nigeria to the path to righteousness and glory.
“ACF also prays to Almighty God to further re-energise the National Security agencies so that they crush the reigns of terror, criminality, and insecurity that non-state actors have been subjecting the people to and which seek to destabilise Arewa communities and the Nigeria at large; turn the hearts of the terror merchants and their sponsors away from their senseless and callous criminality.
“ACF also prays for the conditions which allow and embolden the evil terror merchants to be overcome. Believing that a more peaceful, prosperous, and socially harmonious Arewa, and Nigeria, is still possible and plausible, ACF remains hopeful that our communities will emerge more resilient, stronger, hospitable, even more accommodative for all, as opposed to the current culture of pervasive anger, mutual mistrust, intolerance, despair and hopelessness,” the statement added.
Similarly, the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders’ Forum (SMBLF) has lamented over the inability of the Federal Government to end killings, saying Nigerian leaders on each occurrence only indulge in comparative statistical analysis of the number of lives lost.
They condemned the recent killings in Plateau State, saying many families had been wiped out while the indigenous people were displaced from their ancestral homes with no hope of returning.
In a joint statement endorsed by Afenifere Leader; His Royal Highness Oba Oladipo Olaitan; Middle Belt Leaders Forum National President; Dr Bitrus Pogu; Ohanaeze Ndigbo President General, Senator John Azuta Mbata, and PANDEF National Chairman, Ambassador Godknows Igali, the group said in invasions on Irigwe ethnicity in Zike and Kakpa villages in Kwall District, Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State last Sunday and the previous one in Bokkos Local Government Area a few days earlier, over 50 and 80 persons were killed respectively.
The forum said the people are now left “with no choice than to take their destinies in their own hands severally and jointly.”
They told their representatives in the National and State Assemblies to initiate legislations on state police and ban on open grazing.
They said, “As leaders SMBLF can no longer remain in a state of lamentation and idle mourning while our people are in their numbers butchered in cold blood. The soil of our homelands has drunk enough of our own blood.
“As a minimum demand, we call on the political representatives of our people particularly at the National and State Assemblies for legislations in support of State Police and immediate end to open grazing without prejudice to the Governors immediately putting in place security structures with capacity to withstand terror in our respective states.
“To the people: Rise, stop mourning and lamentation; organise according to your respective cultural and indigenous ways of community defence, seek necessary capacity wherever possible and available. If our people were not conquered before Nigeria, we will not allow Nigeria subject us to destruction and slavery. Take back every inch of your land now.
“In the face of the failure of the Nigerian state to protect you, all acts and weapons in self defence are lawful and legitimate.”
“The planned, coordinated and unrelenting genocidal massacre by suspected Fulani militias in various communities across Nigeria, particularly Plateau and Benue states has pushed all patriotic and well-meaning Nigerians beyond the threshold of mourning for decisive action by people of different nationalities and groups.”
“The only crime of our people is being Nigerians with their ancestral land and its rich resources on which they live peacefully,” they said.
