The President has decried the level of damage done by politics in securing the lives and properties of Nigerians across the country.
President Muhammadu Buhari said this while condemning Saturday’s attack by gunmen which left at least nine persons dead in Nandu Gbok community in Sanga Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
“If the people resist government’s efforts to hold the perpetrators and their sponsors accountable, it would be very difficult to bring the violence to a permanent end,” the President was quoted as saying in a statement by his spokesman, Garba Shehu.
He added, “Everything is politicised in Nigeria, including the efforts to bring offenders to justice, because their people will rise up in arms to resist their arrests and prosecution.”
The gunmen invaded Nandu Gbok community in the early hours of Saturday and started shooting sporadically, burning down about 30 houses in the process.
In his reaction, President Buhari urged those behind the violence in Kaduna to come to terms with the fact that mutual violence has no winners, but losers on both sides of the conflict.
He said, “I am deeply troubled by the fact that sanctity of life is now treated with such reckless disregard that people derive joy in shedding the blood of others or perceived enemies.
“Inhumanity has replaced compassion in the hearts and minds of the perpetrators of these atrocities. No responsible leader would go to bed happy to see his citizens savagely killing one another on account of ethnic and religious bigotry.”
“Violence cannot be the solution to these persistent conflicts as long as people resort to deliberate provocations, revenge and counter revenge,” President Buhari added.
According to him, communities involved must put their shoulder to the wheel in order to find a lasting solution to the crisis as government remains committed to protecting its citizens.
The President insisted that lack of cooperation by those involved might frustrate the government’s efforts towards finding a lasting solution, especially if those efforts were politicised.
He described hate, bigotry and prejudice as “deadly poisons that have infected the human psyche on such scale that people now don’t have any moral inhibitions about taking life.”
President Buhari also appealed to the warring communities to stop frustrating efforts of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to deliver food, medicines, and temporary shelter to the victims of the violence in urgent need of assistance.
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