The Tiv Professionals Group (TPG) has reiterated the call for unity and understanding among Nigerians as the first step to growth and development of the nation.
Speaking through their leader, Professor Zacharys Anger Gundu, when the body paid a courtesy visit on Mdzough U Tiv (MUT) during a stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja Saturday, the Tiv professionals said they had been going round the country to hear views from people, especially groups, organisations and religious leaders including formal President Olusegun Obasonjo, John Cardinal Onaiyekan to gauge their opinions on the route to peaceful co-existence in the country.
Professor Gundu said “we are also going to pay a visit to Bishop Mathew Kuka, the Etsu Nupe in Niger State among others on this mission of peace,” adding that the body is made up of professionals of Tiv extraction within and outside the country, committed to the improvement of the Tiv condition in Nigeria and in the Diaspora.
He said TPG has been in existence since 2011, stressing that they are non-partisan group committed to evidence-based analysis and initiatives.
Professor Gundu said “potent secessionist tendencies, banditry, armed robbery, kidnapping, endemic insecurity, insurgency, drug abuse, poverty, unemployment, religious intolerance have been the order of the day in Nigeria,” pointing out that the situation is exacerbated by leadership failure and structural imbalances in the polity.
He said blood, tears, death and poverty ceaselessly flowing all over Nigeria over one million persons displaced in Benue, property, food and farms worth billions of Naira destroyed in Benue and assurance of a safe day appears not in sight.
Responding, the President of Mdzough U Tiv (MUT) Abuja branch, Major General E.T. Nienge (rtd) called on the Tiv nation to unite and love one another so put their heads together to save Benue and Nigeria from destruction.