By Y.B Galadima (Esq)
Southern Kaduna (SK) as a geographical location and invariably, it’s people have in the recent times been in the news mostly for reasons not distant from insecurity, leading up to bloothbaths, maiming etc.
In fact, it is not recondite that what the people are experiencing does not fall short of what I would term as the condonation of crime, criminals and criminality by a people whose act/omission supports same, and by the government of Kaduna State who has appeared to abdicate its onerous task and responsibility of securing lives and properties. Whereas, SK and its people, become the turf whereupon their aggressors trudges on.
It is apposite that the provisions of CAP 2 of the 1999 CFRN(as amended) particularly S14(2)b, purports that the security and welfare of the people SHALL be the primary purpose of government. Happily, such provisions for me are cast on iron as they brook no watering down. However, unlike the provisions of CAP 4 of the same constitution of Nigeria, these provisions are unfortunately not justiciable. So, to what end? That the people do not reserve a right against the government for failing to guarantee their safety and welfare in the Courts is unfairness to them.
Apparently, due to the way government handles Security, it has almost become a notorious fact that Kaduna State have become the hotbed for bandits, killer herdsmen and other criminal elements.
Meanwhile, SK and its people, particularly the peasant farmers in their villages and farmlands are the hardest hit. They’re the targets for the dastardly carnage premeditated against them. As the result of which, they’re the victims of human inhumanity and government’s ineptitude to secure their “precious” albeit “not-so-precious” lives and properties.
For the records, from the heyday of the first tenure of the present government, particularly in 2016, communities in SK came under fiercest and coordinated attacks by men of the underworld whereby scores of lives and properties were destroyed. For economy of space, I won’t chronicle all the attacks on the villages. Fast-forward to this year (2020), the same attacks on communities in the SK has remained somewhat unabated, whose gory sights have always been littered with hacked human beings, laying lifeless. These are cases of inhumanity and insecurity.
The Southern Kaduna People’s Union(SOKAPU) been an umbrella body for the people of Southern Kaduna, have continuously without relenting released Press Statements reporting about every killings/attacks on her people so that the government will take appropriate action and nip in the bud, the cases of inhumanity and insecurity which has bedeviled the area.
Admittedly, the issue of insecurity is widespread in Nigeria. However, its peculiarity in the SK is i two folds; the first experienced due to the somewhat tacit indulgence or indifference by the government, and the second is by the “cheering killer herdsmen” who have been criss-crossing the length and width of villages and farmlands in the Southern Kaduna, reigning the greatest crime against humanity.
Let me pause and retort; if the state metropolis would have armed security men stationed at every nook and cranny, whilst the villages are left porous and abandoned that criminals masquerade thereat, then, that’s a prime case of a neglected, despised and condemned people left at the mercies of only God knows who. Therefore, it is not enough that there are security men in the cities/towns, the villages too are part of the State. Particularly, the villages of Southern Kaduna. So, the people in the remotest rural areas deserves the constant and consistent presence of security men so they can go about their businesses (farming) without fears of been hacked.
Inhumanity and Insecurity are the twin pillar that have been erected over the geographical space call Southern Kaduna, which I call on every good spirited and well meaning Nigerian to drum up support for their demolition. These I suppose is not asking for too much.
SK people are peace loving and law abiding who have not resorted to taking the laws into their hands as would have been expected of every human being imbued with the primal instincts to act. Therefore, I am calling on the government both at the State and Federal to come in aid of the people by ending the cases of Inhumanity and Insecurity.
Y. B Galadima,Esq;
ybgalas@gmail.com
09081254041(SMS ONLY).
