A civil rights organisation, Centre for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency, CESJET, on Wednesday raised the alarm over alleged grand plots to unleash a nationwide violence using Plateau State as the launch pad.
The organisation claimed that the plot had been hatched by a former governor of Plateau State, Jonah David Jang, to provoke ethno-religious crisis on a large scale.
According to CESJET, Jang had “drafted the Beroms, his ethnic group, for this deadly plot that is now unfolding on a daily basis.”
Speaking with journalists in Jos on the present crisis engulfing the metropolis, the Executive Director of CESJET, Joyce Ogwu, stated that the first objective of Jang was to trigger similar crisis across the entire country based on the expectations that persons of other ethnicities and faiths would carry out reprisals that would overwhelm the police and therefore spiral out of control.
She said: “The second objective is to, on the strength of the crisis, prevent the country from holding elections as scheduled in February 2019. The third objective derives from the combination of the first and second objective, which is to precipitate a constitutional crisis that would undermine the corporate and sovereign integrity of Nigeria.”
While condemning the killings which it described as barbaric and inhuman, the organisation called on the relevant international human rights groups to immediately document them with a view to holding those responsible to account at some point.
Ogwu said: “We allude to perpetrators of this act being held accountable at some points because it will seem that the present political dynamics give them a kind of assurance that they can get away with crimes of the proportion they are committing.
“The CESJET held out hope that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari would have by now dared the consequences and arrest those that are behind these crimes against humanity. Such actions are yet to take place which leaves us no other option than to raise the alarm for the world to hear us.
“There is a grand plot to unleash instability across Nigeria using Plateau State as the launch pad. This satanic plot has former governor of the state, Senator Jonah Jang, at its core.
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“Jang has drafted the Beroms, his ethnic group, for this deadly plot that is now unfolding on a daily basis. This rallies with his promise to make the state and the country at large ungovernable following the loss of election by his party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He made this threat without anything happening to him.
“While he might have been surreptitiously implementing this plan in the past, his arraignment for corruption charges has changed the fundamentals. He is now reported to be working for the collapse of Nigeria on the premise that his trial for theft of public funds cannot continue once Nigeria ceases to exist.
“Several other former public office holders that have been indicted or standing trial for corruption have been recruited to be part of this agenda also in the hope that they will walk away free from their ongoing trial for corruption.
“This plot took a dangerous turn when Berom militia, funded by Jang, mingled with protesters and killed Nigerians of other ethnic extractions claiming that it was retaliation for killing of Beroms by unknown gunmen.
“These unknown gunmen have now been proven to be assassins that were instructed to go on the killing spree and create justification for reprisals against other Nigerians with a view to causing a breakdown of law and order across the country.”
