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President Muhammadu Buhari.

Thursday, 21st Jan 2021
Onitsha, Eastern Nigeria

The latest attacks on the Government and People of Ondo State by the Presidency of retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari through a Presidential Media Aide, Mallam Garba Shehu, over the latter’s defensive backing of terror jihadist activities of the Jihadist Fulani herdsmen in the state’s forests especially its Forest Reserves, are an official confirmation that the country is under jihad being executed by the Government-backed local and ‘imported’ Fulani ‘janjaweeds’.

The intensity, boldness and vigor with which the ‘caretaker’ of the country’s public affairs has come to defend ‘the janjaweeds’ and their jihadist activities are a further confirmation that the present Government of Nigeria through the country’s military especially the Nigerian Army has been responsible for violent movement and permanent settlement of local and imported jihadist Fulani Herdsmen in forests, bushes and farmlands across the country’s rainforest regions especially the Christian held areas of the Old Middle Belt, South-south, Southeast and Southwest.

This was made possible and achievable through an unreported ‘forest mapping’, conducted by the Nigerian Army throughout Nigeria in 2015. Though camouflaged as done for purpose of ascertaining the number of forests in each of the affected regions as ‘a proactive and preventive strategy in the country’s counterinsurgency operations’, but it is becoming independently clearer the real motive behind the exercise discreetly disclosed to Intersociety in 2019 by some of its friends in the military.

The implementation of the exercise, now in the open, had included (a) movement of the Jihadist janjaweeds with outlawed weapons including assault rifles commenced way back in 2016, (b) tying the acceptance of the jihadists’ movement into the affected forests to governorship polls in the affected states whereby the Governors were coerced into accepting same in return for ‘their return to power through presidential protections’ and (c) execution of the exercise using the military especially the Nigerian Army; disguised as ‘Army ranching’, routine movement of the soldiers and their officers, posting of officers of Northern Muslim extraction to man strategic military formations in the affected areas and use of annual military operations such as ‘Python Dance’, ‘Crocodile Smile’, etc.

It is therefore shocking that the present Government of Nigeria put in place to oversee the affairs including collective security, safety and welfare of all Nigerians and their 387 ethnic nationalities who are spiritually and morally attached to the country’s three dominant regions of Christianity, Islam and traditionalism, has dangerously converted the country into ‘jihadist Fulani Caliphate’. The vehemence with which the Presidency singles out Fulani tribe and Islam as ‘the noble tribe’ and ‘religion’ and others as ‘slaves’ and ‘condemned’, clearly solidifies our position.

We hereby stand strongly in solidarity with Yoruba leaders and other social forces that have risen in strong condemnation of the conspiratorial body language and rabid partisanship of the Presidency. We particularly align ourselves with the position of Mr. Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN. The Presidency, indeed, is dangerously turning the Constitution of Nigeria upside down as nowhere in same is it provided or allowed for Fulani Jihadists to violently move and permanently settle inside ancestral forests and bushes belonging to another ethnic nationality and disguised as ‘rural cattle grazing or grazing routes’, but with clear motive of propagating radical Islamism.

Signed:
For: Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law
Emeka Umeagbalasi
Uju Igboeli, Esq., and,
Chinwe Umeche, Esq.
(Principal Officers)