The Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, says the repeated and unending killings on the Plateau is beyond herder-farmer clashes, adding that the murderers “want their own kind of Nigeria according to their ideology”.
The cleric, in a statement on Saturday, charged the government to resist the agenda of the marauders and protect Nigerians.
The cleric, in unambiguous terms, condemned the blood-curling simultaneous attacks by assailants on communities in the Bokkos and Barkin-Ladi Local Government Areas of the Plateau State on Christmas eve.
The attacks have so far claimed over 200 lives with hundreds of houses and farmlands burnt.
Kukah labelled the marauders as “sons of Satan” who “opted to extinguish and snatch the light of the joy of Christmas from thousands of people on the Plateau.”
“There is a method to this madness,” he said in the pensive statement sent to our correspondent by his spokesman, Chris Omotosho. “The choice of location, communities, timings, the seeming hooded identities of the killers mask a fact: we may not know who they are, but someone wants something from the Middle Belt. Stretch your imagination from the emergence of the modern Nigerian state and connect the dots”.
According to the fiery cleric, a war is being waged against Nigeria by the enemies of the country.
“We may pretend that we are not at war, but truly, a war is being waged against the Nigerian state and its people. God forbid, but we could snap anytime, anywhere and for any reason,” he said.