The words and action of certain individuals and a section of the media reducing criminality to a particular ethnic group is a serious threat to national cohesion, a group of Northern leaders led by former presidential aspirant, Bashir Tofa, has said.
It said this in a statement on Wednesday, following mounting tensions occasioned by quit notice issued to Fulani herders in the Southern part of the country by some youths, which had led to physical attack on the herders.
The group frowned at the silence of the Federal Government whose constitutional role it is to protect lives and property, over the issue.
“We are concerned that the criminalization and the negative profiling of an ethnic group as bandits and kidnappers by both the conventional and social media has now taken a dangerous dimension.
“Incendiary speeches criminalizing the Fulani by some political and religious leaders and inciting articles by a section of the Nigerian press, has assumed dangerous dimensions. They have radicalized and transformed their youths not only into eviction mobs but also into killing machines. Quit notices and violent attacks by irate youths upon the expiry of eviction dates have become common.
“History has clearly shown that ethnic and religious profiling have grave consequences for the stability of a nation. They breed intolerance and fanatical hatred as typified by the break-up of India, where millions of lives were lost as it disintegrated, and in Rwanda of recent, where one million people, mainly Tutsi, were murdered in cold blood due to the bigotry of some power-hungry politicians, who are oblivious of global trends.
“We shudder at the thought that the killings of Northerners in the South are calculated to incite retaliation in the North thereby plunging the country into needless bloody conflagration.”
While appealing to the federal government to live up to its responsibilities, the group urged all Nigerians to condemn the wanton destruction of lives and property and the quit notice to fellow citizens
