America, Please, Stand for Us: We Are Dying ………Save Our Lives. We Have Nobody, Except God in Heaven – Cries Middle Belt Clergyman

A distraught Christian clergyman in Nigeria’s Middle Belt cries out a Save-Our-Souls (S. O. S.) plea to the United Nations, European Union, United States Congress, African Union etc. to come quickly to save their lives and stand for them because they are being massacred with an increasing tempo by the AK47-toting Islamist Fulani herdsmen militia in their own ancestral lands. Inspecting the corpse of a recently murdered congregant of his, the alarmed clergymen said that, only the day before, a reverend colleague of his was murdered together with his wife and children by the bloodthirsty Fulani herdsmen. He observed that the herdsmen militia communicate routinely with Nigerian security agents in the area who are blamed to be in cahoots with the murderous Islamist herdsmen. In one incident, a Nigerian Army personnel showed up at the scene of killings on a bicycle, long after the terrorists have done their thing and moved on and started to foment trouble for the victims who he was supposed to be protecting.

In early 2018, a retired general of the Nigerian Army, who hails from the Middle Belt, General Theophilus Danjuma of Taraba state, stated publicly that the army and other security outfits of the country are colluding with the Islamist Fulani herdsmen militia. This assertion by the general came in the immediate aftermath of the mass murder of 73 villagers in Benue state on January 1, 2018. The victims were killed while they slept in their homes and their bodies were subsequently butchered with machetes and cudgels. Neither the incumbent president of Nigeria nor his administration’s chiefs of security agencies showed any public concern about these heinous crimes, including during the mass-burial service held in Makurdi on January 10, 2018. Till date, no one has been arrested or charged for these mass murders. Many more mass killings have occurred continuously since then throughout the Middle Belt, especially in the eastern and central zones.

The Christian priest raised an alarm warning that Islamists are taking over the Nigerian nation and his congregants have nowhere else to run. He laments that the indigenous peoples have already given up large swaths of their ancestral lands for Fulani use, but that gesture appears not to satiate their bloodthirsty assailants. The incensed clergyman is bewildered by the muteness of his fellow reverend pastors who are keeping quiet amidst the ongoing mayhem being unleashed on their congregants in the Middle Belt. Perhaps, fear of attracting the ire of the murderous Islamist terrorist militia may be the cause.

The embattled Middle Belt ethnic nationalities, who are effectively being ethnically cleansed by the marauding AK47-wielding Fulani herdsmen militia, have been counseled to mobilize and organize to protect themselves since the country’s central government is colluding with their killers. The Middle Belters have started to react by the issuance of declarations distancing themselves from the historical regional alignment with the Islam-dominated Arewa Northern Nigeria. The Middle Belt, as expected, has shifted alliance to Christian-majority Southern Nigeria and has also joined the bandwagon of constituents demanding for the immediate geopolitical restructuring of the country or else. Even though the Middle Belt indigenous people constitute the bulk of foot soldiers in the Nigerian Army, there is yet no organized fighting force protecting the indigenous peoples of middle Nigeria from the savage onslaughts by the land-grabbing Fulani Islamist militia.

It should be presumed that Nigeria’s second Civil War shall formally commence when the hundreds of ethnic nationalities of the Middle Belt shall mobilize enough to defend themselves and their ancestral lands from the murderous rampages of the Fulani herdsmen militia.