|
Listen to article
|
A former Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Seriake Dickson, has faulted President Bola Tinubu’s recent visit to Bayelsa State.
The Eastern Updates reported that President Tinubu was in Makurdi, the Benue State capital, on Wednesday in his scheduled visit to the state amid rising concerns over recent violent attacks on innocent Nigerians by suspected Fulani herdsmen.
He met with key stakeholders in the state following the massacre in Yelwata, Guma Local Government Area, which sparked outrage across the country.
In response to the crisis, Tinubu issued orders to the state governor and security chiefs at the Town Hall meeting.
However, Dickson noted that the President’s actions and words were not forceful enough to match the situation of things in that state.
“What has been going on in Benue, Plateau, and in some other places is actually a collective assault. It’s an assault on a collective psyche of Nigerians and as human beings,” he said in an interview on Arise News.
Read Also: Flood: Okpebholo Vows To Demolish Houses On Waterways
“The President went there, which is good, and I think he could have gone there much earlier. But anyway, he went there. But I don’t think decisions and declarations that were made were as forceful as some would have wanted.
“For example, the way some of us look at this is what has been going on there is not an issue of reconciliation, it’s an issue of pure criminality that is almost at a genocidal level.
“And people talk about a certain route, there could be minor elements of that, but you can’t equate killing a cow with slaughtering hundreds of human beings.
“I think that’s the point the Tor Tiv kept making. There’s one picture that is very poignant. I don’t know if you have seen it, the picture of the lady who was in the hospital with a child whose arm had been severed and who looked away, you know, in protest about the actions of government. It’s good that officials of the government went, I mean, the security chiefs were there.
“I spoke with the governor myself, and I know that a lot of security people are there and things are happening, but are they far-reaching enough, clearly after the fact?
“Look, I mean, we’re not talking about preventing. We’re talking about 200, next time you will hear 300.
“I think the government is actually without a solution, as it is now. And I’m not talking of this government alone. The Nigerian state appears unprepared for this sort of violence people are unleashing on fellow Nigerians.”
