The Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) has condemned the burning to death of innocent travellers by bandits on December 6 in Sokoto and called on the government to rise to its responsibility of protecting the people.

In a statement on Thursday in Kaduna, JNI’s secretary-general Khalid Aliyu said the spate of killings in the country was unacceptable.

The religious group said the government must begin to hold security personnel accountable for any attack on citizens where they were deployed.

“Nigerians are desperately yearning for concrete actions against all forms of criminalities. Silence is not golden given the most unfortunate spate of horrendous butchery of human lives in the Nigerian state,” said the JNI statement.

It stressed that Mr Buhari’s regime “should be seen to be proactive on security matters, as well as assure and assuage citizens’ fears at critical moments of grief.”

The JNI described the burning to death of the defenceless travellers as “utterly disgusting, heart-rending and unprecedented.”

“JNI condemns in the strongest terms this senseless and barbaric act, along with other equally disheartening bloodletting and carnage,” added the statement. “Likewise, all other acts of arson attacks attempted prison jailbreaks, bomb blasts in Oyo, Kogi, Plateau, Yobe and Borno states and many of such reprehensible acts, stand condemned by the JNI.”

The JNI urged northern governors to rise up and collectively end the new normal eroding the heritage of the north.

“Government needs to wake up as citizens are becoming more and more agitated. Government should take the bull by the horns by prosecuting promoters of hate speech and tame the rising cases of banditry in Nigeria. Otherwise, it will become a norm that cannot be challenged,” noted the JNI statement.

(NAN).