Uba Sani, the governor of Kaduna State, said on Tuesday that some former governors in northwest Nigeria had jeopardised the region’s security alliance by “wining and dining” with bandits and terrorists.
Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara are the states in the region.
Sani, who appeared live on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, claimed that some governors took an “extremely wrong” approach to managing their state’s internal affairs, leading to the current security challenges.
He said, “I remember when the Kaduna State Government and some states within the northwest — and even Niger State, they have borders with us — came together to work out a framework to tackle this issue of insecurity.
“We had a joint committee, joint funding, working closely with all the security agencies — the army, the air force and the police.
“But unfortunately, somewhere along the line, the alliance broke down when some state governors decided to start engaging the bandits and the terrorists, sitting with them, winning and dining with them, compensating them, negotiating with them.”
The governor added that the approach affected the fight against insurgency.
According to him, the insecurity in the region necessitated urgent action from the governors in the region.
He continued: “Only two weeks ago, I invited all the governors from the northwest to the Kaduna State Liaison Office in Abuja; I hosted them. Irrespective of party differences, they all came; we sat down together and came out with a kind of policy framework to tackle the problem of insecurity.
“We agreed that we have to have a common approach to the issue and we have to move away from the mistakes made by some previous governors that decided to compromise the operation in the past when they started giving money to the bandits and negotiating with them.”
According to him, the northwest governors are in agreement on the need to tackle the problem and reach out to the Niger State governor, Umar Bago, “because we have a similar problem”.
Sani also said that the governors were planning to meet President Bola Tinubu as a group.
“In one of my conversations with him, he agreed that I should bring the governors from the zone to meet with him on the issue of insecurity,” he said.
“So, we have to work together with a common agenda, plan and operation. That is the only way we can be able to solve the problem.”
Interestingly, Sani’s predecessor and political godfather, Nasir El-Rufai, in 2016, admitted his government traced some violent, ‘aggrieved’ Fulani to their countries and paid them to stop the killing of Southern Kaduna natives and the destruction of their communities.
The former governor said, “For southern Kaduna, we didn’t understand what was going on and we decided to set up a committee under Gen. Martin Luther Agwai (rtd) to find out what was going on there. What was established was that the root of the problem has a history starting from the 2011 post-election violence.
“Fulani herdsmen from across Africa bring their cattle down towards Middle Belt and Southern Nigeria. The moment the rains start around March, April, they start moving them up to go back to their various communities and countries.
“Unfortunately, it was when they were moving up with their cattle across Southern Kaduna that the elections of 2011 took place and the crisis trapped some of them.
“Some of them were from Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Senegal. Fulanis are in 14 African countries and they traverse this country with the cattle.
“So many of these people were killed, cattle lost and they organised themselves and came back to revenge.
“So a lot of what was happening in Southern Kaduna was actually from outside Nigeria. We got a hint that the late Governor Patrick Yakowa got this information and he sent someone to go round some of these Fulani communities, but of course, after he died, the whole thing stopped. That is what we inherited. But the Agwai committee established that.
“We took certain steps. We got a group of people that were going round trying to trace some of these people in Cameroon, Niger Republic and so on to tell them that there is a new governor who is Fulani like them and has no problem paying compensations for lives lost and he is begging them to stop killing.
“In most of the communities, once that appeal was made to them, they said they have forgiven. There are one or two that asked for monetary compensation. They said they have forgiven the death of human beings, but want compensation for cattle. We said no problem, and we paid some. As recently as two weeks ago, the team went to Niger Republic to attend one Fulani gathering that they hold every year with a message from me.”