Onwuka Nzeshi 
The Middle Belt Forum (MBF) yesterday declared that it has lost faith in the capacity of President Muhammadu Buhari to secure the lives and property of Nigerians. The group condemned in strong terms the recent attacks on communities of the Middle Belt Region in Southern Kaduna, Southern Kebbi, Niger, Plateau and Benue State that have led to loss of hundreds of lives and decimation of the once thriving communities.
National President of the forum, Dr Pogu Bitrus said that while “there has been a gradual return to the bloody days of horrifying assault on these communities, the carnage has assumed a genocidal level.” Bitrus observed that the nation “cannot survive this level of crippling insecurity that has rendered life short and brutish for many communities in the Middle Belt region.” He then called on the international community to “beam its searchlight on the horrendous massacres of the Middle Belt people being carried out under the watch of President Buhari in the last seven years.
“The Middle Belt Region has lost faith in the capacity of President Buhari to secure the lives and property of Nigerians. We are irrevocably convinced that the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari has abandoned its constitutional responsibility of stopping these recurring deadly attacks on our peoples. “We are still at a loss why the government has not found it expedient to engage local communities on how best to defend themselves against these highly sophisticated terrorists. “We call on our people to be at alert and use whatever is available to them to stand firm and resist these bloodthirsty invaders.
We call on our communities to be security conscious as they celebrate Easter. We must never allow ourselves to be caught unawares by those inflicting all forms of barbarities and threatening our existential survival,” he said. It would recalled that on March 8, 2022, some daredevil terrorists mounted an ambush for members of a vigilante group called ‘Yan-Sa-Kai’ in Zuru, Kebbi State, and eventually killed 65 of them. Attempts by the security forces to bring the bandits to justice led to the murder of 13 soldiers and five policemen, bringing the total of number of the dead to 83.
