TheCable

The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) has condemned the killing of over 20 travellers in Plateau state.

The victims were returning to Ondo state on Saturday, after attending an Islamic function in Bauchi, when they were attacked along Rukuba road in Jos north LGA.

According to the police, 22 people were killed in the attack, while 14 others sustained injuries.

Eight of the travellers are said to be missing.

Reacting to the incident in a statement issued on Sunday by Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, its spokesman, the NGF described the incident as “barbaric and very tragic”.

The NGF expressed concern over the possibility of reprisal, and urged security agencies to arrest all the perpetrators.

“The killing has all the colourations of several others like it where locals in particular parts of the country have become inhospitable and unwelcoming to other Nigerians living in or passing through their domains,” the statement reads.

“These dastardly actions of Nigeria’s once peaceful locals which have resulted in unwarranted and needless deaths diminish us all as a people and pulls our country down to the deepest recesses of the absence of civilisation. They also cause all kinds of reprisal killings and injurious interactions that does nobody any good.

“The Forum views with extreme disgust the horrible and thoughtless loss of precious lives and declare unequivocally that it must stop forthwith. Members of the Forum also call on the country’s security organisations to fish out all those involved and bring them forward to face the full wrath of the law to serve as a deterrent to those who are contemplating similar action.

“Members insist that no human life deserves to be wasted on any ground be it religious or ethnic, or even on the frivolous altar of mistaken identity and hope that Nigerians will desist from taking the law into their own hands so that the country can once again become a safe place for us all.

“Finally, the Forum calls on all aggrieved ethnic nationalities and their militia to avoid needless killings of this nature by always seeking law enforcement assistance and legal redress.”