Allow Peace To Reign, Buhari Tells Jos, Other Warring Communities
The presidency has assured Nigerians that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is on top of recent development and will crush the perpetrators of the recent unrest in Plateau State.
But to achieve the goal, presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, said warring communities must unite against these horrific attacks because retributive violence is not the answer.
According to him, “while these troubled communities are being reinforced with security personnel, our religious, traditional and other community leaders must not allow the use of their spaces for the propagation of violence and incitement to violence.”
He said, “Attempts to simplify the reasons into a basic narrative may help raise donor-dollars for international NGOs, fill pages of overseas newspapers, and burnish foreign politicians’ faith credentials: but this does not increase understanding, nor offer solutions. If anything, simplistic theorising and finger-pointing makes the situation worse.
“It is important both for Nigerians and the international community to appreciate that there are a multitude of factors attendant to these troubles.
“There is the Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorism, as well as the spate of kidnappings for ransom, transformed by some misinformed global media into a Muslim-on-Christian threat. Yet, in reality, there are no religious connotations at all when the primary purpose of these acts is to extract money.
“Then, the herder-farmer clashes. While international voices and some Nigerian politicians who seek personal gain from division declare this a matter of religion, for those involved, it is almost entirely a matter of access to water and land. Herders have moved their cattle and into contact with farmers for millennia. But, increasingly, due to population pressure, the increased aridity of northern states, and climate change, they are forced to travel further south to find grazing lands.
“As for Nigerians, what we need is to come together. And we must do this firstly and for the most part by our own hands, by casting asunder those who seek to divide us for their own nefarious financial and political gains,” he added.
