Defence Minister Culpable For Herdsmen Killings – Cardinal Onaiyekan

Cardinal John Onaiyekan, the Archbishop of Abuja, has said Nigeria’s Defence Minister, Mansur Dan-Ali, is culpably responsible for the Fulani herdsmen killings in Benue and Taraba States.

Onaiyekan’s account comes after Dan-Ali, last week, blamed the herdsmen crisis on farmers and some state governments who allegedly blocked grazing routes and established anti-open grazing laws in their states.

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The minister had said, “…If those routes are blocked what do you expect will happen?…It’s just like one going to block shoreline, does that make sense to you? These are the remote causes of the crisis. But the immediate cause is the grazing law… Communities and other people must learn how to accept foreigners within their enclave. Finish!”

Reacting, the Abuja Archbishop said, “We heard a group saying that all these happened because of the law that the Government of Benue State passed. And honestly, by now, whoever said that, justifying what has happened should be held responsible for it.”

“By now, I expect that government ought to have arrested those people and accused them of aiding and abetting the massacre of Nigerians. For as long as there is this kind of unjustifiable silence, there is fear that more violence will still come,” he told SUN.

Onaiyekan, expressing concern over the recent Benue Killings said, “I will not be sincere and I will not be doing my duty if I don’t express the fact that I am very worried. I am very worried at what is happening.”

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“Like I said, who can see what happened, for example, in Benue state and not be worried; the way children, pregnant women, old men and men were slaughtered? And slaughtered in cold blood! It is not as if there was a fight between two communities and some got killed here and there.

“For whatever reason, this cannot be allowed to go on. And, especially, because of what we saw in Benue and it went viral all over the world; it is a shame for me that my friends all over the world are seeing those gory pictures and saying ah, ah, this is Cardinal Onaiyekan’s country, look at how they are killing themselves. Are they still at this stage of savagery? Well, if I am ashamed, I hope the leaders are ashamed.

The Catholic Bishop further threw his weight behind the anti-open grazing law in Benue and other states saying: “I thought it ought to be clear to everybody that we cannot continue with a situation where you have cows that always roam about freely. It is not possible. And the people who are herding their cattle ought to know that.

“One major issue about all these things, and I keep asking the same question, ‘Who are the owners of the cows?’ My mind is, if we find who owns the cows, then we know those who are hiring terrorists to do this kind of thing in the name of protecting their property. Certainly, it is not the haggard young men who are carrying their sticks around. And everybody seems to have agreed now that the people who come to perpetuate this kind of thing, sometimes don’t want to be called Fulani or herdsmen.”

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