Members of Arewa community in Anambra state have called for calm on a day murdered 32-year-old pregnant woman, Fatima Jibril and her four children with others were buried in Onitsha.
Both the pregnant woman and others were killed by gunmen terrorising the South-East region of Nigeria.
Mrs Jibril, an indigene of Adamawa State, was buried alongside her four children: Fatima, Khadijah, Hadiza and Zaituna, aged nine, seven, five and two with others on Tuesday.
She was nine months pregnant.
General secretary of Arewa community in Anambra state, Mahmud Ibrahim Imam, who spoke in Awka, on Thursday, narrated how the barbaric act happened last Sunday.
Imam via a press statement said, “It happened on Sunday, 22 May 2022. We woke up peaceful, but later in the day, we started receiving calls from our members from various locations of the state that the so-called unknown gunmen had launched a series of attacks on them which led to the deaths of about 15 persons.
“That of Orumba Local Government was the most trending which involved a pregnant woman. Her name is Fatima Jibrin. She with her four kids were murdered in the middle of the road by these faceless and wicked people, called unknown gunmen. All the massacres happened on the same day.
“We are saying this is a well planned and targeted at our people only. And the point of emphasis is the fact that those killings were not the first of such attacks and killings unleashed on the Arewa people in Anambra state since after the last governorship election that was conducted late last year.
“Even on the 18th of April 2022, seven Arewa were brutally killed by the same gunmen at night at Atani in Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra. We wrote to the state government but not even a condolence was not extended to us by the governor or any of the leaders of thought in the state.
“We have the video of their burial at our cemetery in Onitsha. We have buried all of them in our cemetery here in Onitsha, Anambra State.
“We are mourning and also living in a state of extreme fear in the whole of Anambra State.
“It should be noted that if not for our concerted efforts and serious resistance of not taking the corpses back to the North and they are from different states, only Almighty Allah knows what would befall our Igbo brothers residing over there as result of retaliation for the heinous and barbaric actions meted on Arewa people in Eastern Nigeria, particularly in Anambra State.
“We are peace-loving people and we have been living peacefully with our host community for centuries over 200 years in the state.
“We are calling on both state and the Federal government to intervene just to bring to an end the killings going on in the South East, particularly Anambra state.
“Soludo is the governor for all people in Anambra State because we all voted for him, therefore we should be treated equally as humans regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliations.”