President Muhammadu Buhari has been reported to the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth by some lawmakers in the United Kingdom parliament over the unabating spate of killings in the country.
The British lawmakers wrote the Commonwealth
Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland QC, over widespread violence in Nigeria.
These lawmakers include Caroline Cox, David Alton, Jin
Shannon and Helena Kennedy.
According to them, thousands of civilians in Nigeria had
been killed and elements of the Nigerian Government may be complicit in the
violence.
Others, who signed the letter, are Lord Williams, Lord
Carey, Dr Christopher Cocksworth, Phillip Mounstephen, Lord Stoddart, Lord
Anderson, Lord Cormack.
Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, Ayo Adedoin, Ewelina Ochab, Mervyn
Thomas, Dr Khataza Gondwe, Nevile Kyrte-Smith, Dr John Eibiner and Ann Buwalda.
The lawyer sought intervention on the killings in Nigeria,
highlighting the helplessness of the current administration.
See the letter sent to the Commonwealth below...
Recall that earlier this month, President Buhari admitted
that U.S. President Donald Trump had in 2018 accused him of killing Christians
in Nigeria.
Buhari said he defended himself, telling Trump that the
conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria was caused by cultural matters
and not dictated by ethnic or religious factors.
Buhari, who said he was put on the spot by Trump when he was
alone with him, alleging that he (Buhari) was slaughtering Christians in
Nigeria, added that the question startled him but he put his emotion under
control.
The president, who made the disclosure when he deviated from
his closing speech at the end of a two-day ministerial retreat in the
Presidential Villa, said he was the only African leader from less developed
countries that was invited by Trump at the time.
He asked his cabinet members how they would feel if they were the ones put on the spot and confronted with such a grave allegation, disclosing that he further told Trump that the conflicts were caused by successive leaders of the country who tampered with established grazing routes.
According to him, only Nigerian leaders in the First
Republic kept grazing routes while subsequent ones encroached on them, adding
that the crisis was older than him and much more than Trump whom he said he was
still older than.
"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 route 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," he said.
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