Herdsmen Attacks: RULAAC Tasks Communities On Self Defense
The Executive Director, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) says citizens have the right to protect themselves from terrorists-herdsmen and other non-state actors.
Okechukwu Nwanguma, the Executive Director, RULAAC, a Civil Society group who said this pointed out that a government which could not protect its citizens had lost its legitimacy.
Nwanguma condemned the gruesome attacks on the people of Plateau and Benue States and parts of the Southeast by herdsmen
He said a people who failed to protect themselves in the face of systemic betrayal may lose not only their lives but their history, their land, and their future.
He said the rights to life, safety, and human dignity were non-negotiable and must not be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, ethnic patronage, or cowardice.
Nwanguma said the right to life was a fundamental right of citizens under the Human Rights Chatter and Nigerian Constitution and that the government was duty bound to guarantee it.
According to him, these attacks are isolated conflicts but well orchestrated acts of violence, ethnic cleansing in slow motion which was being wrongly classified as herder-farmer conflict.
“The Nigerian state has not only failed to protect its citizens but has become complicit, either through deliberate inaction or tacit encouragement.
“President Bola Tinubu’s recent comment in Benue that “a cow’s life cannot be equated with a humans” rings hollow in the face of continued mass killings, displacements, and the lack of justice for victims.
“Faced with this existential threat and failure of the security architecture to provide protection, local communities must now organise their own self defense structures to preserve their right to life, they are morally and legally justified to protect themselves.
Nwanguma opposed the idea of state Police saying that giving governors control over Police under the current political arrangement was tantamount to handing tyrants a bigger stick.
He said some governors in some states where it had been with State security outfits had mismanaged them by using them to settle political scores, suppress dissent, and hound opposition figures.
The Activist said insecurity was not just a function of insufficient boots on the ground, but of a political culture that rewards impunity and criminality especially when it serves entrenched interests.
“These are governors who already have enormous influence over their state legislatures and judiciaries, adding a Police force to their arsenal would dangerously tilt the balance of power.
“How do we expect them to fund and manage additional manpower when many cannot even pay salaries or pensions,” he said.
He called for arrest and prosecution and that those behind the attacks should be treated as criminals, not appeased as aggrieved stakeholders.
According to him, victims must not be forgotten, they must be rehabilitated, resettled, and compensated.
