The Middle Belt Forum (MBF) has said the ongoing Value Added Tax (VAT) war between Rivers and Lagos States and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has opened the door for the commencement of the struggle for Restructuring of Nigeria.
The Forum in a communique issued at the end of its National Executive Council meeting (NEC) held in Nasarawa therfore commended governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State for his consistent struggle for the Rule of Law and true Federalism.
In the communique signed by MBF national president, Dr Pogu Bitrus, the Forum also commended the Southern Governors and some Governors in the Middle Belt and their State Assemblies for their courage in passing Anti-Open Grazing Laws in their states.
The NEC of the Forum condemned in very strong terms the call by Miyetti Allah on its members not to obey the Anti-Open Grazing Laws duly passed in their states, threatening to make states that attempt to implement such a law ungovernable.
“NEC views this as a clear threat to National Security, and demands that Miyetti Allah officials should be arrested, investigated and prosecuted under our anti-terrorism laws,” the communique stated.
It added that, “Furthermore, NEC resolves that an attack on any of our communities is henceforth, considered as an attack on all Communities in the Middle Belt Region with the attendant responses and consequences”.
The NEC also resolved that people of the Middle Belt Region should rise up and defend themselves in the face of governments abandoning their Constitutional responsibility of defending them or seeming complicity.
The MBF said that the Federal Government must come clean and yield to the demand by the Nigerian public to unveil the identities of the sponsors of Boko Haram, especially the 400 Bureau de change operators as identified by the UAE authorities.
The communique reads further, “NEC finds worrisome, given the report by the UN that the Federal government is secretly engaged in negotiations tagged ‘Sulhu’ with Boko Haram terrorists through which the Federal Government is allegedly offering monetary rewards to insurgents and other criminals. Consequently, NEC is totally opposed to this project and also opposed to any form of amnesty to insurgents and other terror groups who have their hands dripping with blood. NEC is also vehemently opposed to any planned recruitment of these so called repentant terrorists into the national security architecture.”
On Zoning arrangement for the presidency, the MBF said its NEC reviewed the zoning arrangement as it relates to the Presidency in Nigeria and considers the current arrangement of power rotation between the North and the South as unfair as it has failed to recognize the Middle Belt geopolitical block.
It therefore, called on the political actors in Nigeria particularly political parties to henceforth reflect the zoning arrangements for power to rotate between North, South and the Middle Belt.
The communique reads further, “That, the incessant invasions by Fulani militia on several communities across the Middle Belt Region in particular, and other parts of the country in general, have assumed genocidal/ethnic cleansing scale. These attacks have left in their wake mind-boggling massacres and devastations in our communities and displacement of indigenous Peoples to various Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps.
“NEC calls on the Federal Government to identify, apprehend and bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against humanity to justice so as to serve as a deterrent to others. Consequently, NEC calls on the government to set up an agency to be called the Middle Belt Development Commission (MBDC) to serve as an intervention agency in addressing the challenges caused by the activities of these terrorists.”
