Wole Ayodele in Jalingo
A pro-democracy group, Good Governance Group (GGG), has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC)-controlled federal government of planning to declare a state of emergency in Taraba State following the crisis that occurred in the Mambilla plateau.
The group, in a statement signed by its Public Relations Officer (PRO), Ahmadu Sale, said it has information from reliable sources within the military that plans to execute the plan has reached advanced stage.
The group noted that the visit of the Minister of Interior, General Abdulrahman Danbazau (rtd), to the state and Mambilla in particular penultimate week was an ill wind and a harbinger, saying it was a reminiscence of how his visit to Jos prelude the declaration of state of emergency in Plateau State many years back.
According to the group “ever since Senator Yusuf A Yusuf made a call for an emergency rule in Taraba State, he and his cohorts in the APC have been busy. As we write this, plans have reached an advanced stage to slam our dear state with an emergency rule.
Yusuf made that call and now it is being seriously followed up.
“In fact, it has been finalised already by some top politicians and retired/serving generals of Fulani extraction. Even Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan, Minister of Women Affairs, condemned the call recently at her press briefing where she said ‘an emergency rule would bring untold hardship to the people.’
“But despite her opposition to the move even as a prominent member of APC, the surreptitious move had continued unabated and this sinister plan informed the boycott of the public hearing on the anti Open Grazing Bill by Miyetti Allah on Tuesday as well as the seven day ultimatum given to the federal government by Yusuf Dankofa, a professor of law.â€
Condemning the move and maintaining that those planning the evil would not succeed, the group insisted that no government can impose a state of emergency on a peaceful state, saying this is not the first time there has been crisis in Mambilla or anywhere else without a resort to a declaration of a state of emergency
Appealing to all people of goodwill to save the state from the impending invasion and plan to steal Governor Ishaku’s mandate through the back door, the group stressed that the plan of those behind the move is to take Taraba by force and by all means necessary as well as embarrass General TY Danjuma (rtd).
Meanwhile, the Taraba State Government has condemned the Monday, July 3, editorial comment of a national newspaper in which it tagged the Mambilla clash as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In a statement signed by Bala Dan Abu, Senior Special Assistant to Ishaku on Media and Publicity, the government lampooned the newspaper editors for choosing to believe the outrageously partisan and fraudulent figures of death of people and cows as given by Fulani leaders who were party to the crisis rather than conduct independent investigation through their reporter or other field men.
Condemning the editorial comment as highly unprofessional, Abu stated that it was a confirmation of widely held belief that the newspaper cannot be trusted to show balance and fairness on matters affecting entrenched Hausa/Fulani interests.
“The newspaper’s curious silence and failure to label the massacre a few months ago of indigenes of Southern Kaduna by Fulani as a case of genocide and ethnic cleansing has apparently exposed its partisan direction on issues in which the interests of its pay masters are involved. The Mambilla crisis is no genocide and can never be no matter how much they try to make it so.â€
