From Samson Kukwa-Yanor, Makurdi

Senate minority leader, Dr Patrick Abba Moro has chided the federal government and the Nigerian political class for what he called their refusal to come to terms with the magnitude of insecurity bedeviling the nation.

Moro in his address before the Yelewata community and the clergy during the unveiling of the memorial monument to commemorate the one year anniversary of the massacre over the weekend accused the government of shying away from the truth and insisted that the reluctance to confront the problem headlong will not take it away.

Taking a swipe at Nigeria’s political class, Moro rhetorically asked that “can we in all honesty gallivant around during campaigns and tell the people to vote for us again when the mandate that has already been given to us and which we are still holding has not been effectively applied for the people’s well being? We need to wake up”, he said.

Bishop of the Catholic diocese of Makurdi His Lordship Wilfred Anagbe who led the memorial mass called on the government to make it a policy to resettle displaced persons back on their own lands rather than the current resort to make shift Internally Displaced Person’s (IDP) camps.

Bishop Anagbe pointed out that the government’s keeping of displaced persons in camps out of fear of terrorists attacks is a defeatist approach which portrays the government before the populace as weak.

The Bishop said that keeping otherwise thriving members of whole communities in camps where they are made to live off charity is counter-productive to their physical and psychological well being and erodes their human dignity.

He berated the Nasarawa and the Benue State governments for negligence because of their failure to act on the intelligence reports at their disposal persistently alerting them of the planned attack on Yelwata long before it happened.

Anagbe however saluted the resilience of the people of Yelwata for remaining strong in the aftermath of the physical and psychological trauma inflicted on them by terrorists. He assured that the Christian community worldwide are still with them in prayers.

Barrister Franc Utoo, Director of Advocacy of the US-based non profit organization Equipping The Persecuted (ETF) which funded the Yelewata genocide memorial monument said that by “choosing to erect the monument, the organization affirms that those slain in Yelewata must never be reduced to a passing headline or an anonymous casualty figure; they must be remembered with dignity, permanence and honour”.

“As the first monument of it’s kind in Benue state, it occupies a historic place in the moral landscape of remembrance, preserving the names of the 272 members of the Yelewata community who were killed – 67 children, 83 women and 122 men – and placing before the world a solemn record of lives violently taken”, he said.

The community expressed appreciation to Equipping the Persecuted organisation. Andy Nomsoor who oversaw the planning of the one year memorial told The Guardian that the Yelewata community remains indebted to the Director of the ETF Judd Saul who also personally came from the US for the occasion.