An Adamawa based group, Pene da Bwatiye, has accused the state government of not being proactive to address the security collapse in the state prior to the recent attack on Sunday, given security reports and threat to lives by the attackers.
The National President of the association, Prince Hezron A. Fada, at a press
confrerence in Yola, the Adamawa state capital, alleged that the government was availed with the security reports and threats, but the government was nonchalant about addressing the problem.
“The security committees of the local governments had met severally and using laid down channels, communicated to the government and all indicators point to the fact that this attack was in the offing. It was the hope that security measures such as the deployment of troops would be taken to forestall the eventuality we witnessed yesterday” he claimed.
12 villages in Lamurde Local Government Area of Adamawa state were ransacked by people suspected to be mercenary cattle rearers, killing a number of people, during the attacks. The attackers were said to have stormed the communities at midnight of Sunday, having crossed River Benue, entering through Abbare, a border village between Taraba and Adamawa states.
The affected communities are: Bukutu, Luwafuti, Furtu, Wamsa, Suwa Bariki, Sulne, Wurki, Bang, Kullani, Murai, Kiza and Ninge. The Adamawa State Police Command confirmed the incident but only disclosed that five villages were attacked, while six people died as a result of the attack.
ASP Nemuel Yoila said the state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Mark Idakpo, alongside mobile police troops had been dispatched to the crisis-torn areas.
Prince Fada accused the government of complicity saying “regrettably, no such steps were taken and it seemed that government deliberately turned deaf ears and blind eyes to what seemed obvious in surreptitious support of the act seen as a retaliation.”
According to him, the government got wind of the attack since January 2012 but government was not proactive to address the situation. “Governor Murtala Nyako failed to promptly address the situation when the association made a representation to him on the need to forestall the attacks, while security agencies were aware of the security implications to the phenomenon” he stated.
The association also condemned the alleged ineffectiveness of state governor in dealing with the situation, in that no investigation was carried out to arrest the culprits in the first attack and bring them to book, hence a reprisal attack allegedly steamrolled by the governor through connivance with the attackers.
The group also alleged that the use of hired nomadic Fulani mercenaries from the governor’s local government, Mayo Belwa, are waiting to attack Numan and Demsa local government areas and warned they will hold the governor responsible for any further attack on their kin and kith.
However, in a swift reaction, the Adamawa State Government has described the alleged nonchalant attitude of government, as false, baseless and unfounded, as no good government would incite one ethnic group against the other.
Secretary to the state government, Chief Kobis Ari Thimnu, told journalists that the governor, Murtala Nyako, had no right of constitutional mandate to command the military to take control of the situation in Lamurde Local Government as the military received command from their hierarchy in Abuja.
According to him, after the killings at Christ Apostolic Church in Yola, which claimed 11 lives, various security measures were taken by the state government toward avoiding further occurrence.