Buhari: What I told Trump on killing of Nigerian Christians

TRACKING____President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday said he took his time to explain the root cause of farmers/herders’ crises in the country to the President of the United States, Donald Trump, when he visited him in 2018. President Trump had asked Buhari: Why are you killing Christians?

In response, Buhari said he told Trump that the constant clashes leading to loss of lives were not religious but economic. According to him, the First Republic leaders did well by creating grazing routes only to be encroached upon by the succeeding administration causing constant clashes between the herders and the farmers.

The President, in his closing remarks at the Ministerial Retreat in Abuja, yesterday, said: “I believe I was about the only African among the less developed countries the President of United States invited, and when I was in his office only myself and himself, only God is my witness, he looked at me in the face, he said ‘why are you killing Christians?’ “I wonder if you were the person how you will react. I hope what I was feeling inside did not betray my emotion.

“So, I told him that the problem between the cattle rearers and stagnant farmers I know is older than me not to talk of him (Trump). I think I am a couple of years older than him.

“With climate change and population growth and the culture of the cattle rearers, if you have 50 cows and they eat grass, any root to your water point, they will follow it, it doesn’t matter whose farm it was.

“The First Republic set of leadership was the most responsible leadership we ever had. I asked the Minister of Agriculture to get a gazette of the early 60s which delineated the cattle routes where they used meagre resources then to put earth dams, wind mills even sanitary department.

“So, any cattle rearer that allowed his cattle to go to somebody’s farm is arrested, taken before the court, the farmer is called to submit his bill and if he can’t pay, the cattle are sold, but subsequent leaders, VVIPs (very very important persons) they encroached on the cattle routes, they took over the cattle rearing areas. “So, I tried and explained to him, this has got nothing to do with ethnicity or religion. It is a cultural thing which the respective leadership was failing the nation.”