A civic alliance has raised alarm over a crisis it says is spiraling beyond control in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.
The Civic Coalition Against Mass Atrocities in the Middle Belt is urging the Federal Government to confront what it described as “the persistent violence, characterized by targeted attacks on communities, massacres and mass abductions.”
The coalition alleges that entire communities have been emptied, only to be replaced by “imported settlers” a move it considers deliberate and calculated.
At the heart of the appeal is the group’s convener, Barrister Gloria Ballason, who addressed journalists in Kaduna. She directed her message at President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Federal Government, pushing them to uphold their “constitutional mandate for the security and welfare of the people.”
“We remain committed to supporting initiatives that promote peace, justice, and accountability in Nigeria and are ready to collaborate with authorities both in providing the body of evidence that informs our positions and in implementing sustainable solutions to this political crisis with profound humanitarian consequences,” she said.
The coalition called for an immediate assembly of Middle Belt state governors to forge a unified security front. It also demanded the return of ancestral lands “forcibly seized and occupied by terrorists and belligerents” to the original inhabitants.
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The group further pressed for a separate high-level meeting involving governors of northern Nigeria’s border states to dig into the underlying triggers of the conflict.
“We urge the Presidency to not only direct the security agencies to return displaced people and communities to their lands, but also provide the executive and political backing to discharge this responsibility to prevent the sabotaging of Government’s directives in this regard,” the statement read.
“Develop and deploy an integrated intelligence framework that combines local knowledge from community members with technical intelligence capabilities of security agencies, ensuring that preventive action can be taken before attacks occur,” she added.
She did not spare the past administration in her criticism, accusing it of erasing cultural identity through political interference. She described the move as an “intentional destruction of cultural heritage as war crime,” citing that “in the last administration, particularly in Kaduna State under Governor Nasir Elrufai, Chiefdoms such as the Adara chiefdom were scrapped, the identities of people and communities were illegally changed, chiefs were deposed by executive fiat for no justifiable reasons, as whole communities now exist as non-people. These injustices need to be addressed and reversed.”
She called on the judiciary to rise to the occasion: deliver justice, hold perpetrators accountable, and restore faith in the rule of law.
Courts, she stressed, must not delay or compromise. They must ensure “swift, transparent trials for perpetrators of violence,” and hand down sentences “that reflect the gravity of the crimes against humanity.”