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Nearly one month after the Mutual Union of Tiv in the United Kingdom (MUTUK) staged a street protest in London against Fulani herdsmen killings in Benue State, the British Government on Friday, February 23, 2018, reacted to the petition delivered to the Prime Minister, Theresa May, at 10, Downing Street.
In the petition, which was hand delivered by MUTUK executives and titled: ‘Stopping the systematic killings and displacement of rural farming communities by terrorist Fulani cattle herdsmen in the Benue Valley of Nigeria’, the organisation requested the British government to consider intervening in the ethnic cleansing.
It also requested the Federal Government, as a matter of national security, to take necessary steps to identify and disarm the Fulani herders and their accomplices and to also provide protection for the victims.
However, in the response dated, February 19 and signed by one Angela Almona (Whitehall Nigeria Unit) from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and addressed to Dr. Kohol Shadrach Iornem, the Vice President of MUTUK and convener of the protest, the British Government appeared to have taken a neutral view and expressed its faith in what the Federal Government had done so far.
“We welcome President Muhammadu Buhari’s commitment to assisting the affected communities and examining a longer-term peaceful solution to the conflict,” the letter read.
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