Ex-Nigerian envoy to Canada and Mexico, Prof Iyorwuese Hagher, has
made shocking revelation about the rampaging killer herdsmen as they terrorise
the farmers and communities across the nation.
The former envoy and Prof alleged that the arms being used by the Fulani
fighters may have been coming from the Nigerian armoury.
In an interview with Daily Sun, the former
envoy stated that having studied the situation so far, he was alarmed to
discover that apart from the Sultanate and the Emirate, President Muhammadu
Buhari was even considered as a patron of Miyetti
Allah.
Hear him: “I am a scholar, a professor of
development theatre, in my intellectual career it is my responsibility to study
communities and phenomena and I have over the years made it a point of duty to
deal with issues like crises within the
communities and I have been involved in observing the phenomena of ethnic
crisis, communal crisis, farmers’ crisis, within the middle belt which has been
subsisting for decades now.
“I have been a peacemaker, a peace builder, I am
a total pacifist; I hate violence in any form including verbal violence. So, in
observing the trend of the crisis between herdsmen and farmers within the
middle-belt area from 2013; I was alarmed when I noticed that in 2015 there was
a sudden jump in escalation of the incident that
increased since President Buhari took over in 2015, I noticed that this
escalation was based on a systematic process where it was not just all Fulani
herdsmen and the farmers.
“There was now a new dimension to the crisis,
the new entry was commando-style execution, gruesome murders
of the farmers, the barbarity which showed that there was a disturbing trend
towards the genocide that was now the possibility and the reality.
“As there was increased violence because much
more than the usual struggle of the incident of cows being killed and
therefore the grazers come in respect of the killing of their cows or that a
cattle has been rustled and then they come pursuing revenge over the loss of cattle.
“There was an upsurge in attacks in which the target communities
in Southern Adamawa, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa , Plateau, Southern Kaduna and
Taraba states was where I found the phenomena that was really disturbing.
“The equally disturbing scenario was that in
most of the places where these attacks were being unleashed, it seemed to me
that they were mainly where Christianssettled and
when I looked at the fact that when President Buhari took over he had a very
efficient approach towards the Boko Haram.
“So, I began to study the possibility of the Boko Haram having
diffused itself to become a Plan ‘B’ because the herdsmen terrorism was no
longer the usual clashes, this was terrorism at monumental scale, this was
terrorism that was a world class definition of terrorism.
“The herdsmen became the force classified as the
4th most deadly terrorist group on earth. I was alarmed that it was not just
this area but it was a proliferation, country wide where
herdsmen were conflicted and I became equally disturbed to learn that the
organization had the sultanate and the emirate of Northern Nigeria which were
Fulani in origin and also the President of Nigeria was even considered as
a patron of the Miyetti Allah and I said wow!
“This is a pretty heavy stuff and I began to
analyze the conversations that were going on that time and I became alarmed and
disturbed because they were too few structures on ground to prevent the
genocide, structures like an effective legislature, an independent judiciary,
an effective national human rights institution or independent media or a
neutral security force because the more I studied about the phenomena, the more
I discovered that the police and the army that were supposed to be neutral
security forces were recording incidents in which the arms used by the
insurgents were coming from the Nigerian armoury and the corruption that began
to be unveiled of politicians and the easy supply of arms across the country,
with arms market all over; if you go to Niger, you buy an AK47, it is completely on display, if you go to certain
parts of this country you will see arms being freely sold.
“I studied the motivation of the leading actors and there was
considerable motivation because the issue of land in the middle-belt and the
fertile land that is irrigated by the River Niger and the River Benue.
“The desertification has taken place in the north and global
climate has affected this area and no less than 20,000 cattle looking for water
sources especially in the dry season, looking for grass and then I looked at
the phenomena of displaced people of Nigerian stock in Darfur, in Libya who are
pushed to come back; who are herds people and if they came back, what would be
means of their livelihood, these people are fighters for decades, they have been
fighting in those environments and as they fight in those environments, the
psychology of instability is already imbedded in them, they are insurgents and
wherever they go, insurgent mentality prevails in their mind.
“They want to come back to Nigeria, they reach out to some
Nigerian leaders, Nigerians lived for years in Darfur and now Northern Sudan
doesn’t want us; they are making slaves of us, where do we go?
“The only place we can settle is in the Benue
valley, people who are there are not even Muslims, so it makes it easy,
considerable motivation for ethnic cleansing and the borders are porous. So,
when I started putting all the pieces together, I saw that it was possible for
genocide of unprecedented magnitude to creep in on us in a manner in which we are unprepared.
“We underestimated the Boko Haram and it grew up like a phantom
into a reality, which we were not able to control till this moment
effectively.” (Daily Post)
Comments
Post a Comment