Plateau killings: Ohanaeze attacks Buhari over insensitive death toll comparisons

The apex socio-political body of the Igbo, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s comparison of the killings in Plateau State to those in Zamfara State as “most unfortunate.”
In a statement by the Special Adviser to the President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo on Media and Publicity, Chief Emeka Attamah, on Thursday, Ohanaeze said “it believes that no human life is greater than the other and that two wrongs do not make a right.”
“Rather than compare the number of casualties, the Federal Government should rejig its security apparatus, stop further killings and appease the families and communities affected by the senseless killings,” the pan-Igbo body said.
Ohanaeze Ndigbo expressed fears that “from the trend of events, it appeared as if General T.Y. Danjuma’s outcry that there was a grand design by some people to carry out ethnic cleansing in the country and that government was colluding with them was justified.”
Ohanaeze called on Buhari to allay the fears of the people, “especially with the double standard being exhibited by the Federal Government in the handling of the issues of IPOB and the suspected Fulani herdsmen.”
The association restated its call on the Federal Government to declare the Miyetti Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, the umbrella body of the herdsmen, as a terrorist organisation, as was done to the Indigenous People of Biafra.
“While the Federal Government proscribed IPOB, a harmless organisation, Miyetti Allah which has openly claimed responsibility for most of the attacks for just the killing or rustling of their cattle has gone around unscathed.
“If government could label IPOB a terrorist organisation, there was no reason the Miyetti Allah, the umbrella body of cattle herders, should not be proscribed and their leaders prosecuted.
“If the Federal Government was not being partisan, why the silence on the utterances of Miyetti Allah who also attributed the killing of their cattle in the Benue massacres to their attacks there?
“How many suspected herdsmen have been taken to court for either the killings in the country or for carrying Ak-47 rifles about in the full glare of security operatives, contrary to the provisions of the law,” the statement said.