Open Letter to President Tinubu

 

Your Excellency Sir

For about a decade and half, the Northern part of Nigeria has been enmeshed in two major crises. The first was Boko Haram, born and bred in the North East. From their confrontation with the Police to the execution of their leader, Boko Haram grew to become a terror group unprecedented in Nigeria’s history. The most unfortunate thing is that Boko Haram associated themselves with Islam even though most of their heinous attacks where targeted at Muslims.

The failure of Jonathan Government to end the Boko Haram insurgency led to a consensus by Nigerians to disallow him from getting a second shot at presidency. He lost the 2015 election to your friend and party member General Muhammadu Buhari.

 Buhari, throughout the process of his campaign for the office of the President, promised to end the scourge of Boko Haram and return normalcy to the North East. What he ignored, but he was not supposed to ignore given his security background, was another crisis rearing its ugly head in the North West.

Non-Fulani Nigerians were setting up cattle farms in city suburbs and gradually establishing themselves in the business of cattle farming for which the Fulani were known. This did not go down well with some Fulani who began to form groups to attack such farms and rustle the cows. Anyone who resisted was killed. Since such non-Fulani cattle farmers were relatively small in number, it was soon over with them and cattle rustling was extended to fellow Fulani most of whom were law abiding.

In no time, cattle rustling turned into banditry and kidnapping. Armed chair analysts with little knowledge of what was on ground began to create conspiracy theories. Some blamed it on Niger Delta militants. Others said it was foreigners from sister west African countries.

As at 2015 when President Buhari assumed office, the crisis could easily be nipped in the bud. There were a handful of cattle rustlers/bandits who could easily be identified, arrested and punished. Unfortunately, Buhari did not do it either because he was not being correctly briefed or out of sympathy for his kinsmen who were the culprits.

In October 2016 some Governors, notably the Governor of Zamfara followed by Katsina Governor invited the bandits’ leaders for a peace agreement. That was after they had killed countless numbers of innocent citizens. The villagers in the two states were told to accept the criminals as their brothers or face the wrath of the state. They had no choice.

 

The peace accord did not last long before the bandits resumed their crimes. It became worse by the day. Banditry continued to thrive under Buhari administration and in 2019 he directed Governors of the affected states to dialogue with the bandits. The Governor of my state of Katsina, looking vividly frustrated told the bandits before press cameras that he was meeting them on the directive of Mr. President.

Few months after the 2019 accord, Masari told the world that the bandits had reneged on the peace pact. According to him, they were not people to be trusted.

A point of note in both the peace accords of 2016 and 2019 was that none of the bandit leaders was a citizen of any foreign country. They were all Nigerians, and all of them were Fulani. This invalidates the false belief that the bandits are foreigners or that they were from another tribe in the south. Most of those hardened criminal lords are still moving about unscathed in villages and forests of Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Sokoto and Niger states. That they have been granting press interviews and meeting people like Sheikh Ahmad Gummi is evidence that Government is very much aware of their locations and identities.

I cannot speak for other Nigerians. But for me as a person I voted for you in the 2023 elections for two reasons. One. You are a Muslim. A Muslim is just as a leader and nice as a companion. If all Muslim leaders are to rule according to the teachings of Islam, even their enemies would beg Muslims to stand for elections so they vote them to power. Two. Neither you nor your running mate are Fulani. With this, the sympathy some of us believe Buhari had for his kinsmen would not be there.

You are now into your second year and banditry is only getting worse. What struck me most about your approach to banditry are the latest revelations by a young Islamic scholar, Sheikh Munir Adam Koza. According to Sheikh Koza, he was among the many young influential Islamic scholars invited for a meeting by some defence officials of your government. With financial reward, they were requested to propagate the following in their preachings.

 1That banditry by Fulani groups is justified because Fulani have been subjected to neglect and injustice over a long period.

 2.      Call on Government to dialogue with bandits and give them political appointments.

 3.      That the current Governors of Zamfara and Katsina are wrong to have set up security outfits to confront bandits.

 Sheikh Koza who expressed his disagreement at the first meeting was not invited to subsequent meetings.

That there are Islamic scholars actively preaching the above items is a testimony of the veracity of Sheikh Koza’s statements.

The first question I raised when I saw the video clip was whether you are aware of this action taken by your appointees. It would be a monumental mistake to say since the insecurity is taking place in the North, you have now appointed Northerners to solve “their” own problem.  Nigerians voted for you and not for Ribadu, Badaru, Matawalle or any of those. You are thus accountable to Nigerians and before God for any action taken by your government.

With all the due respect of a loyal citizen, I would like to call on your Excellency to come clean on this action allegedly taken by officials of your government. Taking appropriate action against the said Government officials would go a long way to consolidate the confidence ordinary citizens like me have in your government.

Most importantly, we want an end to banditry. It can be ended, Mr. President.

 

Professor Abdussamad Umar Jibia

23/07/2024

Is Tinubu afraid of ending banditry?

 

It is now eight years since my uncle was murdered. Imam Salisu’s offence, like I mentioned in several writeups before, is prayers. As the Imam of his village, he led his congregation in weekly prayers against banditry, a prayer they observed after reciting the whole Qurán every Thursday. Reports to the Police Commissioner, intervention of the emir and the cries of his children did not prevent Governor Masari from forgiving his killers and the killers of many other citizens which the Governor did two months after his assassination. At our end, we did not forgive his killers nor Governor Masari and his boss. We await the big judgement inevitably taking place after this life.

 

As at 2016 when Salisu was killed, it was much easier to arrest and prosecute the bandits who were in limited numbers. Unfortunately, Government decided to invite and beg them to stop crime. They were given money and hajj slots. When the money stopped, they reneged.

 

Let me go to the point.

 

On Thursday, May 30 2024 a video clip showing many blind-folded criminals arrested by Nigerien security operatives flooded the social media. The criminals, according to their Nigerien captors were 66 in number and a man identified as Baleri was said to be among them. Baleri is one of the senior gang members of Bello Turji, a criminal who committed many atrocities in Zamfara state including at one time burning alive of more than 30 travellers in their bus along Gusau Sokoto road.

 

According to the news, the suspects have been carrying out criminal activities in Madaroumfa district. They were arrested at a Ruga near a village called Tangama while planning to do what they know how to do best. The Governor of Maradi, Yousuf Mamman and his entourage that included the Chief judge of Maradi state were shown at the scene to see the criminals for themselves. Found with the bandits were motorcycles, drugs and weapons captured by cameras of journalists.

 

Few days later, in another viral video, a rifle-carrying middle-aged man who identified himself as Muhammad Bello Turji was shown in the company of several of his fellow armed criminals refuting the claim by Nigeriens of arresting his comrade Baleri. He showed a young man he referred to as the real Baleri claiming that those arrested in Niger Republic were innocent commoners whom he called upon President Abdourahamane Tchiani to release.

 

In the remaining part of the clip, Turji spouted the false narrative created and spread by bandits and their sympathizers that they were forced into banditry by continuous neglect and injustice.

 

Turji’s clip was replied by a young Nigerien officer who warned Turji that Niger Republic is not like Nigeria where he kills, kidnaps, collects ransom and gets away with it because he has the backing of Government.

 

As for whether or not the arrested person was the real Baleri, the officer said it was the person who gave his name as Baleri promising that Turji will himself be arrested if he tries any of Mali, Niger or Burkina Faso.

 

In these altercations between criminal Turji and Nigerien military, certain things are worth underlining. For example, the claim by the Nigerien military spokesman that Turji and his likes have the support of Nigerian Government is true. I opened this piece by narrating how the Government of Katsina state forgave and rewarded criminals who killed law-abiding citizens to the chagrin of the victims’ families. The so-called peace accord sealed between bandits’ leaders and some Northwestern state Governors was done on the directive of the immediate past Federal Government. Even when the criminals broke the peace promises they made, they were begged to come and sign another agreement in 2019 which they breached not long after. If this is not support, I don’t know what is.

 

An additional reason to believe that Nigerian Government is supporting banditry is the fact that for all these years that huge amounts of money have been budgeted for war against terrorism, no bandits’ leader of note has been arrested or killed. None of Turji, Dan-Karami, Dogo Gide, Audu Lankai, Ado Aleru and others in their category has been touched in the so-called war against banditry. Some of them like Aleru have been turbaned as traditional rulers after killing dozens of defenceless Nigerians.

 

Again, we have not seen any effort from Nigerian Government to arrest/prosecute people who have openly supported and rationalized banditry. Sheikh Ahmad Gummi is an example of such people. Not only did Gummi advocates amnesty for such criminals, he has been interacting with them openly with the backing of Nigeria’s security operatives.

 

That bandits’ leaders have been meeting the likes of Gummi and granting press interviews show that their whereabouts are not unknown to Government. The will to end their reign of terror by Government is simply not there. We understand that most of them are of Fulani extraction and the immediate past President of Nigeria is a Fulani man. What about Tinubu? Is he afraid? Is he not worried that innocent Nigerians who queued up to vote for him are continuously butchered, raped and kidnapped for ransom while he is the president? Is he not worried that a group of ragtag bandits would camp somewhere on the Nigerian soil and be issuing threats to a neighbouring country? Is there nothing he can do about all these?

 

It is often believed that to win Northerners’ votes, a politician doesn’t have to worry about the masses as long as he satisfies the elite. The latter would manipulate the masses into voting for him. It is also well known that some of the Fulani groups have the support of very influential Northerners. Is Tinubu afraid of confronting these people to save ordinary Nigerians?

 

 

Abdussamad Umar Jibia