Abdulaziz Yari, the governor of Zamfara State and chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, has said killings by Fulani herdsmen will not abate because perpetrators are criminals who have taken the attacks as a money-making venture.
Yari stated this in an interview with State House correspondents on Thursday, February 1, 2018 after a meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
The closed-door meeting, held at the vice president’s Office, was attended by the governors of Adamawa, Ebonyi, Plateau and Kaduna States; the Deputy Governors of Benue and Oyo States, as well as the Ministers of Agriculture and Interior.
Yari also disclosed that the meeting constituted a new committee headed by David Nweze Umahi, the governor of Ebonyi State, with the governors of Adamawa and Plateau States as members.
He said that people from the “hotspot” states of Benue, Taraba, Adamawa and Zamfara would be brought in to join the new committee in order to interface with the Meiyetti Allah and other groups with a view to reducing the crisis to the barest minimum.
“Why we cannot say we can put this matter to rest is because some of them have taken this as a money-making venture; some are criminals who hide under this to perpetrate this act,” Yari said.
A fortnight ago, the National Economic Council set up a 10-man committee headed by the Vice President to end the crisis.
Yari explained that the NEC raised the Osinbajo-led committee so that the situation would not get out of hand and in order not to make the problem look as an ethnic or religious crisis.
The Governor, however, affirmed that the Osinbajo-led committee had made progress.
He said the crisis had been “a long standing problem” which some states, including his, had been battling with since 2007.
“As government, we have to take all the measures. Despite the fact that the Army, the Police and all the security agents are on the field at the respective places, still we have to form this committee to interface with those actors so that this matter can be reduced to the barest minimum and possibly be wiped off,” Yari said.
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