Kaduna State Governor Mallam Nasir el-Rufai has said his government has traced some violent, aggrieved Fulani to their countries and paid them to stop the killings of Southern Kaduna natives and the destruction of their communities saying that the renewed violence is carried out by bandits.
El-Rufai made this known while fielding questions from some select Journalists in his office in Kaduna.
He said: “For southern Kaduna, we didn’t understand what was going on and we decided to set up a committee under Gen. Martin Luther Agwai (rtd) to find out what was going on there. What was established was that the root of the problem has a history starting from the 2011 post election violence.
“Fulani herdsmen from across Africa bring their cattle down towards Middle Belt and Southern Nigeria. The moment the rains starts around March, April, they start moving them up to go back to their various communities and countries.
“Unfortunately, it was when they were moving up with their cattle across Southern Kaduna that the elections of 2011 took place and the crisis trapped some of them.
“Some of them were from Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Senegal. Fulanis are in 14 African countries and they traverse this country with the cattle.
“So many of these people were killed, cattle lost and they organised themselves and came back to revenge.
“So a lot of what was happening in Southern Kaduna was actually from outside Nigeria. We got a hint that the late Governor Patrick Yakowa got this information and he sent someone to go round some of these Fulani communities, but of course after he died, the whole thing stopped. That is what we inherited. But the Agwai committee established that.
“We took certain steps. We got a group of people that were going round trying to trace some of these people in Cameroon, Niger republic and so on to tell them that there is a new governor who is Fulani like them and has no problem paying compensations for lives lost and he is begging them to stop killing.
“In most of the communities, once that appeal was made to them, they said they have forgiven. There are one or two that asked for monetary compensation. They said they have forgiven the death of human beings, but want compensation for cattle. We said no problem, and we paid some. As recently as two weeks ago, the team went to Niger republic to attend one Fulani gathering that they hold every year with a message from me.
Who gave these Fulanis permission to come to Nigeria to graze their cattles in the first place? Nasir el-Rufai talked about this unfortunate incidence with pretend naive helpless abandon in the hands of these illegal herdsmen who frequently enter and exit Nigerian porous borders with brazen attitude as if they have the right to do so.
Yet el-Rufai is appeasing these illegal Fulani trespassers with Nigerian money. This is crass at its highest. This is obviously an intergovernmental border issue concerning crossboder cattle grazing between Nigerian federal government and the countries where these Fulanis were emerging from.
If these so called Fulani cattle rearers didn’t come into Nigeria illegally for the purpose of grazing their cattles during the elections in 2011, would they’ve been caught up in the melee of Nigerian politics?
El-rufai, you’re spending Nigerian money wastefully to appease your Fulani brothers. Do the right thing by making sure that these illegal Fulani cattle rearers stop coming into Nigeria through our porous bothers. It’s that simple and not even close enough to rocket science.