Govt Not Sincere In Stopping Killings – Sen Sani

BY SEGUN ADEBAYO, ABUJA – As the spate of killings continues unabated, Senator Shehu Sani, who represents Kaduna Central Senatorial Zone, has disclosed that those describing the massacre as handiwork of “desperate politicians” are simply on a wild goose chase.
The Senator said that as long as focus was not beamed on those who confessed to have paid herdsmen to stop killings in Kaduna state, so long will the efforts to halt the killings remain a mirage.
In a latest tweet on his twitter handle, @ShehuSani, the member of the upper chamber of the National Assembly tweeted thus: “If a serving State Governor can openly confess to be paying Herdsmen in his state to stop killings; And you are still blaming nameless ‘desperate politicians’ and looking for culprits, then you may find them in Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus or Saturn.”
Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai of Kaduna State had shocked television viewers when he confessed on national television that he paid money to foreign herdsmen to stop the killings of people in Southern Kaduna. Despite outrage expressed by citizens, no further investigation was carried to ascertain the veracity of his claims.
Recently, the presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, alleged that “desperate politicians” were behind the spate of killings carried out in the country and not herdsmen. The changing of narratives by government, according to prominent Nigerias, have been responsible for the inability of the security organisation to tackle the killings which the Presidency alleged to have claimed no less than 22,000 lives under PDP’s 16 years of power.

Recently, The United States Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has said it documented at least 19,890 deaths in Nigeria since June 2015, just after President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office on May 29, 2015. Another group, United Kingdom-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), disclosed that Fulani herdsmen killed 1,061 people in about 106 attacks on communities in North-central geo=political zone in the first quarter of 2018. The CSW also disclosed that 11 other attacks on communities in Southern Nigeria by the deadly herders claimed another 21 lives.