* Meets Fulani leaders over kidnapping in South-west
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A former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, yesterday called for an end to the blame game among ethnic groups and tribes over criminality in Nigeria.
He spoke in Abeokuta, Ogun State, when he met with leaders of the Gan-Allah Fulani Development Association of Nigeria (GAFDAN), an umbrella group for Fulani ethnic organisations in Nigeria, over kidnapping and other security challenges in the South-west.
The meeting which took place at the Boardroom of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) at Oke – Mosan, Abeokuta, had in attendance the GAFDAN National Chairman, Alhaji Sale Bayari, delegates of the association drawn from South-west states, Kogi and Kwara states.
Also at the meeting were spokesman of the Afenifere, Yinka Odumakin and Mr Dayo Adewole, son of the former Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, who was kidnapped recently in Oyo State.
The former President said the roundtable meeting was put together to interrogate kidnapping and other insecurity challenges confronting the region with a view to proffering solutions.
He said the former Minister’s son, a victim of kidnapping, was invited to the meeting to narrate his ordeal and be part of the problem – solving initiative.
Obasanjo maintained that a number of the insecurity challenges are shrouded in the dark, saying “we all need to be in the light to proffer solutions.”
He said, “we want to have peace, we want to have security, we want to have harmony, we want to have wholesomeness, we want to have progress, how can we have these? We want to move Nigeria forward, irrespective of tribe, religion, ethnicity, trade, profession, where I come from, where you come from. How can we together move Nigeria forward? And there is nobody else who will do all these for us, it is you, we, all of us here and all our brothers and sisters wherever they maybe in Nigeria.
“It is not one man’s job or one person’s job or one group’s job, it a job for all of us, all Nigerians and unless and until we see it that way, we should stop passing blame, everybody is wrong and everybody is right. Let us take what is right in one group and join it with what is right in other groups and throw away what is wrong in all the groups then we will move forward.
“Our brothers and sisters in West Africa are worried about our situation. They are wondering if Nigeria cannot manage her security, if Nigeria’s security is endangered, how can they look up to Nigeria who they normally see as a big brother?
“I was born in a village and grew up among all tribes that were in that area: Ebira, Egun, Igala, we didn’t even call them Hausa or Fulani, we called them Mallams because that is what we knew them as. We knew them as Mallams and we grew up friendly. Peace was reigning but what has now changed?”.
Obasanjo, however, hinted that another meeting would hold in the next three months to report progress on the resolution.
Earlier, the GAFDAN chairman said farmers and herdsmen clashes had snowballed into kidnapping and banditry.
According to him, the issue is beyond herdsmen/farmer crisis, ‘‘it has moved to kidnapping and banditry and if we are not careful, it may lead to a kind of jihadist/ militant group and that is what we fear’’.
Bayari said herdsmen carried arms to “have balance of terror”.
Reading the communiqué issued after the meeting, Bayari said Obasanjo and the Fulani leaders advocated establishment of a Joint Community Responsibility group among the Yoruba and Fulani leaders at the community levels.
According to him, it was resolved that criminal herdsman and non-herdsmen must be identified, exposed and brought to book, to serve as a deterrent to others.
“From all the evidence, among those who perpetrate these crimes are non-Fulani and Fulani. We should begin to do things differently and in a new way bring them out for sanctions.
“It is important to call on leaders who failed to do what they are supposed to do. Fulani who know the criminals among them must expose and report them to the appropriate institution. So must other ethnic groups,” Bayari said.
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