Kukah, who disclosed this in a statement in a statement issued on Sunday titled "Blood and Crucifixion on the Plateau", also said that the assailants want the power on their terms.

The perpetrators of the attacks and mass killing of Christians in Plateau State and other parts of northern Nigeria want power, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese Most Rev Matthew Hassan Kukah has revealed.

Kukah, who disclosed this in a statement in a statement issued on Sunday titled "Blood and Crucifixion on the Plateau", also said that the assailants want the power on their terms.

Kukah further noted that the killers want their kind of Nigeria according to their "ideology" and warned that the recent killings are just a "preface".

Bishop Kukah said the attackers, whoever they are, have unspoken motives in the north-central part of the country

According to him, the method, choice of location, communities, and timing of the attacks further restate the attackers’ motive.

He said, “We may not know who they are, but someone wants something from the Middle Belt. Stretch your imagination from the emergence of the modern Nigerian state and connect the dots.

"These people want power. They want it on their own terms. They want their own kind of Nigeria according to their ideology. These killings are just a preface. These killings are no longer acts by herders and farmers over grazing fields. No, there is more and we as a nation will do well to face this threat before it is sunset. No evil lasts forever. The world defeated Slavery, Apartheid, Nazism, Racism, and forms of extremism.

“We have questions crying for answers: Who are these killers? Where are they coming from? Who is sponsoring them? What are their grouses and against whom? What do they want? Whom do they want? Who are they working for? When will it all end? Why are they invincible and invisible? Who is offering them cover? Are we condemned to live with this and hand this broken nation to our children? Should we all just become inoculated and sedated to make all this bearable? Who will supply the opium to dull our pain? Are we sleepwalking to self-destruction?”

The cleric lamented that the ‘murderers’ have left their footprints of blood and tears across the length and breadth of the entire northern states, indiscriminately wreaking destruction across large swaths of land and communities.

He said, "Why has the north become the birthplace of so much bloodletting? Why have these killings seen as tools of negotiation with the Nigerian state by the protectors of the north? Why has our north become the incubator of all that is destructive? Boko Haram, banditry and shades of terrorism all live in our region.

"Why is this so? These killers are not ordinary murderers. They are killers for a purpose. It is the task of the Intelligence community to tell us who they are, where they live and what their goals are. These killers are professionals and are they Nigerians or they have just Nigerian sponsors? Their sponsors are among us.

"They must be in high places. They are now embedded in the architecture of state. President Tinubu must know that the legitimacy of his government hangs on resolving this and giving us our country back," he stated.

“It is the task of the intelligence community to tell us who they are, where they live, and what their goals are. These killers are professionals and are they Nigerians or do they have just Nigerian sponsors? Their sponsors are among us,” he said.

"They must be in high places. They are now embedded in the architecture of the state. By the banks of the Niger River, on the hills of the Plateau, across the lush savannah of the middle belt, we have sat down and wept."