Former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Prof. Ango Abdullahi has accused Southern political leaders of blowing the Benue massacre of New Year’s Day out of proportion in order to divide the north.
He also accused the media of conniving with politicians to divide the nation along ethnic and religious lines to heat up the polity.
The 80-year-old Abdullahi, who is the spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum, said these in an interview with Vanguard.
Abdullahi described as false the allegation that Fulani herdsmen were behind killings in Benue.
He said, Everybody is talking about Benue but who is taking about Taraba? Did you report the 743 people that were murdered in Mambilla? Did you people report the 953 people that were murdered in Kaduna? Did you report the 500 people that were killed in Southern Kaduna? Did you report the Fulani that were murdered in Numan and so on?
You did not, but politicians are pushing you to report the 73 that were killed in Benue and this is what is heating the policy and the several hundreds of people that died in other places have died in vain. So, I am accusing the press of bias and for engineering some of the difficulties we are having today.
The herdsmen crisis is politically driven. We have been having herdsmen for over 200 years or 300 years ago in Nigeria, particularly we in the North. I haven’t seen how this crisis between farmers and herdsmen would lead to attacks and loss of lives. This is a politically driven agenda, perhaps, intended to split the monolithic North; we have been talking about the monolithic North for a long time politically in this country.
I have been involved in debates against some respected people from the southern part of this country who believe that this country is not balanced because the North is too big; because the North is too politically united, so there must be a way of disrupting this unity, and this is what we are seeing on ground today, and the elements that are being used are the Fulani herdsmen.
This matter would be looked at properly; political alliances and so on are welcome. You don’t need to lose blood, or property to engage in political alliance or whatever you want, or still, you don’t need to introduce excuses that will lead to loss of lives. We saw this when the Boko Haram was on ground; they said northerners created the sect to disrupt former President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, which led to his failure in the last election, and so on. Now that Boko Haram is out of the way, the new excuse is the Fulani herdsmen. This is what is happening in other places except in areas that you are talking.
We have seen what they called a new handshake across the Niger; it is political, and we have seen the mourning that has taken place in Benue and other places to show that the monolithic North is not in tandem with the Middle Belt; it is all politics. Our Middle Belters don’t need to take the agenda that appears to be a thing of distrust. We are not going to force anybody into a relationship politically or otherwise. We see this as a political agenda.