Kallamu Ali Dikwa, a cleric in Borno State has narrated how herdsmen from Fulani extraction took over lands from Borno State indigenous people.
The Director General, Centre for Justice and Ethnicity in Nigeria gave the narrative while speaking with Sahara Reporters.
Mr Dikwa who backed the 7-day vacation order to herdsmen by Rotimi Akeredolu, Ondo State governor, advised southern state governors to follow suit if they don’t want to lose their ancestral lands.
He said indigenes of his state were hospitable to the Fulani people but those he called settlers made use of the opportunity and sent away their parents from their ancestral lands.
“The southern governors had better take charge of their lands and send the Fulani people back to the North. Must they stay in the South?” he queried.
“I am speaking from experience because I am from Borno State and these people took all our land. They sent our fathers and mothers away from the farms. Our people are in internally displaced persons’ camps; they cannot stay in the villages for fear of being killed.
“Any Fulani you see in Borno is a settler, we accommodated them and see what we got. The target is Southern Nigeria and it is better the people speak up now, so that Fulani will not take over the land,” the cleric warned, adding that the Fulani people are on a mission to take over Nigeria’s economy.
“In Abuja here, the bureau de change operators cannot even speak Hausa, they are not Nigerians but Nigeriens. They have come to take over the economy and once they do that, they will start controlling us,” Dikwa said.
He revealed that a northern Christian cleric who was kidnapped and later freed was told by his captors that they planned to kill all the Christians in the North and thereafter storm Southern Nigeria.
“That pastor will not tell you this, they are being diplomatic with this kind of information instead of speaking out so everybody will know,” he said.
“The problem of insecurity has come to stay, but we need to speak out so the narrative can change. We can’t keep folding our arms while our people are being killed.
“Two of the kidnappers who kidnapped the pastor here in the North are actually based in Benin City, Edo State; they are already in the South. The onus is on the governors to take charge. Federal government will not help anyone,” he added.
