The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders
Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) has denied killing anybody in Plateau state.
Casualties were recorded when
suspected herdsmen invaded communities in three local government areas of the
state last weekend.
The police had confirmed that 100
persons died in the attack which reportedly started on Saturday and ended
Sunday.
TheCable visited some of the
affected villages and discovered that residents have fled the area while the
deceased have been buried.
Meanwhile, Mohammadu Nura, MACBAN
chairman in the state, said the group did not attack residents.
He said those killed in the
attack were herdsmen, adding that the group has confirmed that 19 of its
members died while 73 others are missing.
“As at now, we have been able to
bury 19 persons of our own in different places. We have declared 73 persons
missing. We have not seen them nor their corpses. So people are taking our
corpses, going around the world and telling people that it is their corpses
that the Fulani killed,” he told TheCable.
“These corpses they are saying,
they are propagating (doing propaganda) against us. They are our corpses. We
are calling on the government to go and exhume the corpses, let us see their
faces. The corpses are our corpses, I believe that.
“I (can) tell you with authority
that we have not taken part in the killings. No herdsman killed anybody. If
they say they are Fulanis, let them produce those Fulanis, we want to see
them.”
He said the herdsmen have been on
“the receiving end” of the crisis in the state, and have been “chased away from
many villages”.
“In most of the villages, Fulanis
were chased out. It was when fragile peace was returning that people started
coming back,” he said.
Asked if he knows those who
carried out the attacks, Nura said: “The police are in a good position to tell
you who carried out these killings. Because there is tension in Plateau, their
eyes must be everywhere. So their personnel must be everywhere.”
Ibrahim Idris, inspector-general
of police, has sent special forces to the state in a bid to fish out the
attackers.
The military had paraded some
suspects accused of carrying out the act.
President Muhammadu Buhari had
condemned the incident and also vowed to bring the killers to book.
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