Christians Demand Shelter for Southern Kaduna Victims

• Christians Demand Shelter for Southern Kaduna Victims

The Christian Elders Forum of Northern States has called on the Federal Government to provide shelter for the over 30,000 internally displaced persons who are victims of the ongoing Southern Kaduna crisis.

The group also urged the state government to offer the victims relief materials to reduce their sufferings.

It warned officials and influential Nigerians against fueling the volatile situation with their utterances.

The body, in a statement by its national chairman, Olaiya Phillips, and Secretary, Patrick Ambut, also advised politicians to guard their utterances in order to avoid the aggravation of the crisis in the area.

NOSCEF bemoaned the needless destruction of lives and property in the affected communities, and called on the warring parties to embrace peace.

It said, “If new gaping wounds are opened and allowed to fester, we are merely preparing the ground for future descent into darkness that will serve no one well.”

Meanwhile, a community leader in Bodong, Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna State, Mr. Nuhu Waney, on Saturday lamented that the area had not known peace since herdsmen attacked it in 2014.

Waney in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Friday said residents of the area were still confused over why they were forced to become internally displaced persons in their fatherland.

He explained that Kaura had suffered most of the attacks perpetrated by herdsmen whose identities had yet to be made public.

According to him, “the only likely possible explanation for what is happening is the expansionist ideology of the attackers.”

The community leader recalled that 148 people were killed in a single attack in Bodong on March 14th 2014 a month before the kidnap of the Chibok school girls but that the government did not show much interest in the matter.

Waney said, “If you look at the attacks in Kaura Local Government Area, it is the largest of all the attacks. We were forced to set up an IDP camp for ourselves before government came in 2014.