Aleke Aleke in Abuja
A group operating under the aegis of the Southern Zone and Middle Belt Alliance for Peace yesterday urged President Bola Tinubu to stop misguided gun-wielding non-state actors terrorizing communities in Nigeria.
The group also stated that a decade of banditry, kidnapping, land grabbing, sacking of communities, destruction of means of livelihood, infelicitous and illegal appropriation of mineral resources have continued to generate mistrust and insecurity in the country.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja yesterday, the National Chairman of the Southern Zone and Middle Belt Alliance for Peace, Dr. Okolie Amaechi Sadiq, said, “We call on the Nigerian government to urgently take legal and radical steps to put an immediate stop to insecurity and various forms of insurgency perpetrated by misguided gun-wielding non-state actors in Nigeria.
“The phenomenon of non-state actors seizing parts of the sovereign state of Nigeria should be put to a stop. Our president, governors, and traditional rulers, town union leaders, as well as different security agencies in the country, must rise up to their fundamental responsibility of protecting the lives of Nigerian citizens.
“We suspect that the violent and criminal non-state actors do not act without the support of highly placed and influential Nigerians, home and abroad. It is conventionally assumed that illegal traffickers of dangerous weapons work together with these violent and insurgent non-state actors.”
Okolie called on the insurgents to stop the act of killing Nigerian citizens forthwith.
He regretted that many Nigerians have been driven away from their homes and made to live in refugee camps.
Okolie also called for the resettlement of IDPs back to their ancestral homes.
Calling on the president to also improve the nation’s economy, the national chairman said, “We fully and wholeheartedly support the ongoing efforts by President Bola Tinubu to restore peace and stability in the country.
“We call on him to invest greater energy in healing the economy, such that food and transportation prices should be greatly reduced.”
