Kaduna State Governor Mallam Nasir
el-Rufai has said his government has traced some violent,
aggrieved herdsmen 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.”
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