Taraba Killings: Take Proactive Steps to Stop Waste of Lives – Buhari to Community Leaders

By Precise Post Reporter

Abuja (Precise Post) – President Muhammadu Buhari has reacted to the needless waste of human lives in Taraba state as he charged community leaders in Taraba State to start taking proactive steps to forestall further killings in the state.

President Buhari said this while reacting to a violent communal clash between Shomo and Jole ethnic groups in Lau council area of the state, which reportedly claimed 25 lives and left several others wounded on Tuesday.

The President, however, condemned the ethnic violence and the attendant destruction of lives and property, blaming failure of community leadership for the escalation of the situation.

The President, in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, instructed “there is the need for community leaders in the State to be more proactive in order to nip threats of violence in the bud.”

Reacting to the incident, President Buhari said “I am deeply disturbed by the resort to violence over disagreements that could be resolved through dialogue.”

According to the President, “these frequent incidents of ethnic and communal violence is a failure of community leadership and the refusal to embrace dialogue as a means of conflict resolution.”

He explained that “disagreements over lands or fishing ponds shouldn’t be allowed to degenerate into violence and destruction of life and prosperity.”

The President said that “violence has never settled any problem and, on the contrary, it makes a bad situation worse and lay the seeds of future conflicts.”

“If everyone says they must get what they want through violence, then we make it impossible to allow peace to prevail, thereby jeopardizing every prospects of amicable resolution of disagreements,” the President pointed out.

While sympathising with the victims and their families, President Buhari appealed to leaders at all levels in Taraba State “to seize the initiative in order to forestall outbreaks of deadly violence by thugs.”

He said “life is so precious that leaders in the area should take urgent and decisive actions to halt this disgraceful slaughter of people.”

He prayed to God to forgive the innocent people that lost their lives in the violence and comfort their families.