Apex socio-cultural group in the North-Central, the Middle Belt Forum, MBF, has called on the United Nations, UN, to commence an independent probe over allegations of Christian genocide in the region.
The MBF, in a statement issued on Sunday by its National Spokesman, Luka Binniyat, said the probe was necessary as there is evidence of an ongoing campaign of extermination against Christians and indigenous ethnic nationalities in the Middle Belt region, especially in Plateau State where thousands of people have been killed and displaced from their ancestral lands by Islamic extremists masquerading as Fulani militants.
While warning that the scale and pattern of the killings fit the international definition of genocide, the socio-cultural cited the recent massacre of 13 Berom natives in Rachas village, Heipang District, Barkin Ladi local government area of Plateau as a grave and grim reminder that the Middle Belt is bleeding from a sustained and organized plan to wipe out its native populations.
“What is unfolding across our land is nothing short of genocide. It is systematic, organized, and sustained, aimed at wiping out entire communities, seizing ancestral territories, and erasing native identities,” the statement said.
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The MBF also frowned at the widespread violent attacks being witnessed in Plateau, Benue, Southern Kaduna, Niger, Taraba, and other parts of the region which it described as part of a long-running renewed jihad that has turned genocidal in nature, targeting Christian and indigenous communities who are neither Hausa, Fulani, nor Kanuri.
“These are people who, historically, were never conquered by the Kanuri Empire or the Fulani Jihadists before and after colonial rule. They have always defended their autonomy, identity, and ancestral lands, and that same courage is being tested again today,” the MBF said.
The group, citing the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, noted that the pattern of violence in the region including killings, displacements, destruction of homes, and the deliberate creation of unlivable conditions, falls squarely under the legal definition of genocide, and called on the UN to wade in before Christians and natives are completely wiped out.
The Forum also accused extremist groups and armed herders of pursuing a religiously inspired campaign that began with Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province, ISWAP, and has now evolved into widespread attacks by Fulani militias and allied terror groups.
“In Plateau State alone, between April and August, over 1,200 indigenous people, mostly Berom, Irigwe, and Mwaghavul, were murdered. Sixty villages were burnt, churches destroyed, and more than 80,000 residents displaced.
“The government’s failure to arrest, prosecute, or punish the perpetrators of these atrocities emboldens them.
“Even worse, some state governments openly grant amnesty to known bandit leaders, hosting them with fanfare while victims are left to mourn. This sends a dangerous message that the lives of Middle Belt natives do not matter.
“The pattern is clear: specific ethnic and religious groups are targeted, their lands occupied, their churches and schools destroyed, their identities erased, and the state deliberately fails to protect them. This is a coordinated, ideologically driven attempt to annihilate the indigenous nationalities of the Middle Belt.
“The time for silence is over. If the Nigerian State continues to look away while these atrocities persist, history will judge it complicit in one of the darkest chapters of our nation’s existence. Every day we delay, another community is wiped off the map,” the group warned.
