CAN faults El-Rufai’s monetary offer to killer herdsmen

Nasir El-Rufai

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Kaduna State branch has faulted the state Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s decision to offer herdsmen money to stop their killings and violence in Southern Kaduna.

CAN said it found it unbelievable and shocking that a governor could admit locating herdsmen who had been carrying out killings and destructions and giving them monetary sums.

Kaduna State Chairman of CAN, Bishop Jonathan George Dodos, who addressed newsmen yesterday after the Chairman-in-Council meeting in Kaduna, insisted that what was going on in southern part of the state was an ethno-religious cleansing by vicious herdsmen in a way that was “sickening and repulsive to civilisation.”

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Dogos said that CAN had taken a tour of the five villages attacked by armed herdsmen in Chawai Chiedom, Kauru Local Government Council of Kaduna state last month and saw the destruction of scores of homes, two churches, food in barns set ablaze, leaving behind 45 bodies and nine wounded persons.

Said Dogos: “It is sickening and repulsive to civilisation that such cruelty could be meted out to any person, no matter what issue was at stake.

There is no way to conclude other than say that what is going on in Southern Kaduna is ethno-religion cleansing carried out by the Fulani herdsmen. Government must rise up to its responsibilities and defend the people that voted it to power. Otherwise which population will vote them again after being wiped out before 2019?”

On the utterances of El-Rufai at a media briefing last week, in which the governor said he had paid some killer herdsmen responsible for the violence against natives of Southern Kaduna, and that he was compiling list of people calling for self-defence in Southern Kaduna, the Catholic Bishop said it was very unbelievable and shocking that a governor could say that.

He said: “Was it not crimes against humanity that the herdsmen committed? Are they to be made to face the law or be paid to appease them? If he was able to trace them to their countries, then he should be able to know the very people that have been carrying out the killings in Southern Kaduna and start making arrangements on how they will face the law. I have not read what the governor said, but if it is true, that means he is rewarding criminality. The next question to ask is what did he do for the victims?”

The cleric argued: “If a fly was to enter El-Rufai’s eyes, would he not wave it away or kill it? That is self-defence. It is instinctive and even animals defend themselves. You threaten an animal with death and it will defend itself. The United Charter on Human Rights recognised this.”

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