A Nigerian lawyer, Franc Utoo, has accused Nigerian soldiers of training the militias responsible for the mass killings in Benue and Nasarawa communities, especially the massacre of over 200 people in the Yelewata community in Guma Local Government Area last Saturday.
The legal practitioner who made the allegations in an interview with BusinessDay, without mincing words, said the soldiers trained and led the militias in the coordinated attacks aimed at exterminating the Tiv ethnic group in Benue and Nasarawa States.
In a video that has been trending on social media platforms since Wednesday night, Utoo gave a vivid account of how attackers operated with military-style tactics and precision, suggesting that there is a complicity in the ongoing genocidal violence that has left hundreds of people dead and scores of others displaced.
He narrated that he drew his conclusion following the confession of a suspect arrested during one of the attacks who reportedly said that some of the soldiers not only trained the attackers but also coordinated the attack that left several Tiv villages completely overrun and occupied.
Utoo stated that the attackers stormed communities on more than 100 motorcycles in broad daylight, killing residents and occupying their homes in operations which showed signs of tactical planning and military precision.
“And let me tell you, let me also shock you; about seven soldiers joined them from Giza, the community adjoining my own village,” Utoo said in the interview.
“They arrested one who uttered all this, made this confession. He said some of the soldiers from Giza trained them in Fulani stuff. And they joined them. They command the whole thing.
“So what they did was extremely tactical and strategic with military precision. Right now, there are a lot of Tiv villages in my council ward that have been taken over by Fulanis. They take over not just for grazing, but for proper settlement.
“You go to these villages today, you find even their kids crawling. Small kids who are yet to start walking.
“They brought them, you know, their families occupying Tiv homes, Tiv houses, which are still standing, occupying those houses. And they have their kids there, not just their cattle.
“Many of my friends from the adjoining villages in the North Central states who are of different ethnic groups other than Fulani, anytime the Fulanis are mobilising like this attack, they told us day before yesterday, ‘We communicated to the security forces nothing has been done.’
“This is no longer secret; it’s just like the secret cultism in Nigeria they got out with their Ak-47 in a community called Giza in Nasarawa state in the boundary between Nasarawa and Benue states in Giza and Kadorko.
“All our friends from there told us and they come out in the open with their Ak-47, they hold meeting openly. You know they are going to strike and some people begin to bid their farewell, may God take you safely.
“When people want to be politically correct, they will say no that is it’s not and that is why you see the Sultan of Sokoto will not react to this. He reacted when just about 11 so-called hunters were killed in Edo State.
“They reacted, they put up Northern Elders Forum, they had meetings, several press conferences, many governors stood up.
“The Edo State governor had to travel to Kano State to go and say sorry, just 11 alleged hunters. If really they were hunters who were killed now, 200 and nobody did not speak because that is the collective agenda and the complete takeover of the land of our people…”
