BEVERLY HILLS, September 8, (THEWILL) – President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday said President Donald Trump of the United States asked him why he is killing Christians in Nigeria when the two leaders met at the White House in April 2018, and that his reply was that the killings were as a result of an age-long cultural conflict between herders and farmers, which predates both men. He said he explained that the killings had nothing to do with religion or ethnicity.
This is the first time President Buhari is making this encounter public, which he said occurred when both leaders were together along without aides and advisers.
The President made the remarks when he delivered the closing speech at the end of the two-day ministerial retreat in the Presidential Villa, where he charged ministers and officials of the administration to vigorously defend the achievements of the administration in public, saying they have achieved a lot with limited resources available to the government.
He said: “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, windmills 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.
