“During Abacha, there was allocation in the budget for the nomadic communities. There was no such thing again since Obasanjo became president. They stopped looking after the Fulanis. Their forests and grazing areas were taken over.”
A group of bandits has insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari must physically come to dialogue with its members while the group blamed its campaign crimes and terror on the supposed inability of the President to solve the problems faced by their community.
In an interview with Daily Trust, the group of bandits also claimed it supported Buhari when he first became Nigeria’s president and that the president has not rewarded their loyalty.
“We supported this administration and accepted dialogue because we thought Buhari will fix this country, but he won’t fix this country,” a masked bandit told Daily Trust.
“An agreement was reached, but you left that person in the forest with a gun and nothing to substitute. What do you expect? How do you want that person to survive? All the promises made to us none of it was fulfilled,” he said.
The bandits further criticised Buhari for not having allocation in the budget for the nomadic communities.
“During Abacha, there was allocation in the budget for the nomadic communities. There was no such thing again since Obasanjo became president. They stopped looking after the Fulanis. Their forests and grazing areas were taken over,” he said.
In the past few months, the country has continued to see a spike in insecurity as bandits have been carrying out a series of attacks and kidnappings in the northern region of the country.
A northern prominent Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, had met with some of the bandits in the forests of Zamfara, appealing for peace.
A masked bandit in an interview with Daily Trust, however, said if Buhari could travel around the country when he was campaigning, nothing should stop him from coming for peace talks with them.
“The president should personally come and preside over the talks. When he was campaigning, he travelled all over, why would he not do it now? He does not take these peace talks seriously and everyday people are being killed.
“There is no day that someone is not killed between Zamfara, Niger, Kaduna, Sokoto and Katsina. There is no tribe that is spared, gunmen kill, soldiers kill, vigilantes kill.
“Whoever you see with a gun today in Nigeria, he uses it to kill people. You may not know but if I were to tell you the situation of things in this country, you will cry. Even the president will cry.”
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