We the undersigned, are appalled by the current happenings across the country, especially as it relates to the deliberately engineered ethnic disharmony currently going on in the southern states.
As Nigerians, we must always be ready to resist the profiling of any group as evil or the sole source of any crisis.
The on-going profiling of the Fulani and the Hausa as the causal factors of the current challenges facing the country must be condemned by all.
The words and action of certain individuals and a section of the media reducing criminality to a particular ethnic group is a serious threat to national cohesion.
In spite of the current propaganda, emerging evidence is clearly showing that kidnapping and banditry is neither restricted to one particular ethnic group or one region in Nigeria.
Ritual killings, armed robbery and kidnappings for ransom have become an equal opportunity activity for all sections of the country and as they are being arrested and prosecuted around the country, the profiling of groups is limited to Northerners.
While we commend attempts by some national leaders to douse rising tensions, the silence of the Federal Government whose constitutional role it is to protect lives and property, is worrisome.
We are concerned that the criminalization and the negative profiling of an ethnic group as bandits and kidnappers by both the conventional and social media has now taken a dangerous dimension.
Incendiary speeches criminalizing the Fulani by some political and religious leaders and inciting articles by a section of the Nigerian press, have assumed dangerous dimensions.
