IGP Idris: Who sposored the Abuja Press conference (Opinion)

By Yanor Kukwa

As a media practitioner, I have a general idea of how much it would cost to have a press conference. Even for Makurdi standards, hiring a hall, invitations, publicity and estacodes run into hundreds of thousands of naira or even millions depending on the scope of the conference.

Now the so-called Tiv youths world wide who addressed a press conference in Abuja are not known to have any stable source of income and are not financially comfortable enough to fund a press conference not even in our own Makurdi but Abuja where the cost would be far higher.

It therefore goes without saying that there are vested interests behind prodding the young men on. Of course the motive is clear: schemings for 2019.

But should we allow what ever political schemings to put the entire Tiv nation to ridicule? Today newspapers and other news outlets will carry the story that Tiv youths are agitating for the tenure extension of the same Inspector General of police who in the face of the unprovoked and gruesome murders of our people told the whole world that it was because of the anti-open grazing law. But the same police IG could not explain why places like Zamfara, Southern Kaduna, Numan, Plateau, Nassarawa and Taraba etc which are without the anti-open grazing law are also theatres of bloodshed perpetrated by the same fulani herdsmen terrorism.

How will the rest of the country now look at us? The sponsor(s) of that ignominious press conference are the real enemies of Tivland. Whomever they are, or he is must be found out and brought before the Tiv Traditional Council to reprimand them.

The national disgrace of Tiv leaders going to Abuja to tell the world that the Tiv people are killing themselves is still too fresh.

*This write-up is in memory of our slain mother’s, fathers and brothers and sisters who where brutally hacked down in January last year. Today marks the one year anniversary of their burial. May their souls rest in peace.