A group, Tiv Development Association, Nasarawa state, has lambasted the Alago Ikweyi Gbayi Development Union (AIGDU), over comments credited to it in response to the speech of the Tor Tiv when President Bola Tinubu visited Yeleweta in Benue state over the killings of 200 people.
In a statement signed by acting President of the association, Professor Emmanuel Iornumbe Kucha, and made available to Blueprint, he said the comments by the union as “grossly wicked and against all sense of decency.”
The statement reads in part: “We believe it does not represent the voice of the Alago Nation which is made up of Christians and Moslems that believe in the sanctity of human lives.
“We pray that such pain and lost is not witnessed by any ethnic group or nationality. We do not wish the Alago Nation that manner of horrific genocide and will never rejoice where such inhumanity befalls any ethnic nationality,” he said.
“We do not have any issue with our Alago brothers/neighbours and are therefore shocked at the harsh words, insults and open condescending diatribe employed in the statement of the Alago Development Association against the entire Tiv Nation for making a lawful and legitimate demand from the President of our country.
“It is puzzling that whilst the State Government is acquiring our land compulsorily for a purported agricultural purpose, it is the Alago Nation that has become the mouth piece of the Executive Governor of Nasarawa State and the only ethnic group supporting this clearly unlawful action and injustice against the Tiv Nation.
“We must make it abundantly clear without mincing words that the lands in question were de-forested by our fore-fathers and passed on to us from generation to generation and the allegation that they belong to the Alago Nation is not correct.
“That explains why the Alago Development Association is supporting the mass and compulsory acquisition of same by the government. The Association will NEVER support acquisition of its land by any government agency. So, it is clearly a reminder of the Solomonic example in the Bible where in a contest for a child, the woman who was not the mother of the child was quick to agree that the child be split into two, whilst the actual mother prayed for the child’s preservation.
“Based on the foregoing, we have chosen not to join issues with the Alago Development Association, because we believe that we are brothers and stand to gain more by fighting this injustice and ensuring that our lands are preserved.
“Our brothers should note that, if this injustice against the Tiv nation is allowed to stand, no farming community in Nasarawa State is safe, including their own ancestral homes and farmlands.”