A group, Tiv Youth Council Worldwide, on Tuesday called on the security agencies to investigate Taraba State Governor Darius Ishaku and ex-Minister of Defence Lt Gen Theophilus Danjuma for their alleged roles in the violent clashes between Jukun and Tiv in the state.
The group claimed the clashes were being sponsored to discredit the Muhammadu Buhari government.
The President-General of the body, Mr Mike Msuaan, who made the allegations during a press conference in Makurdi, claimed Ishaku and Danjuma had not done much to stop the clashes which had claimed lives.
The group recalled that Danjuma reportedly asked Nigerians to defend themselves at a public event in Jalingo last year.
Msuaan said, “Killing everywhere and every time is bad but why is General Danjuma silent and why has he suddenly lost his voice now that his Jukun brothers are killing Tiv people in his home state.”
Msuaan, whose speech was read by Mr Teryila Apine, said they believed Tiv and Jukun could live in peace, but lamented that some powerful people in the state were only interested in what they would benefit from the crisis.
He said, “Their prime objective aside from ethnic dominance is to stir dissents against the government by raising the tempo of war to an Inferno’s pitch, thereby fuelling national insecurity for political gains just to paint the Muhammadu Buhari government in a negative light.
“This worrisome trend has successfully been deployed surreptitiously by opposition political figures in flash areas to stir ethnic bile and generate needless tension across the nation just to give the government a bad name.
“To these fiendish pitchers against the government, no magnitude of destruction is too weighty so long as it tarnishes the reputation of the Buhari government.”
However, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the Governor Bala Dan-Abu described the group’s allegations as “baseless”.
He said, “Governor Ishaku and his Benue counterpart have been meeting over the security challenges in the area.
“But such serious allegations against senior statesmen like Governor Ishaku and TY Danjuma must be backed up by sufficient proof.
“I demand to see the evidence in the allegations that warrant my balance because putting the allegations and my balance without evidence will make the public to believe their story.”
Meanwhile, the Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University Wukari in Taraba State, Prof Abubakar Kundiri, on Tuesday said the school would reopen today after a two-week mid-semester break.
In a telephone interview with one of our correspondents, Kundiri said the university embarked on a mid-semester break to calm the tensions resulting from the protests by Tiv and Jukun students.
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