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.