Third Republic Senate President, Chief Ameh Ebute, has berated the former Defence Minister, Lieutenant General TY Danjuma (Rtd) some serving governors and elder statesmen of leveraging on the farmers/herders’ clashes to discredit President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Ebute stated this in a paper he presented, Tuesday, at an International Conference on Good Governance and Accountability in Government organised by the Coalition for Civil Society Organizations for Change and Good Governance in Abuja.
In the forefront, as stated by Mr Ebute, is Lt Gen TY Danjuma (Rtd) whom he claimed has surprisingly remained calm despite the clashes between farmers/herders in his state, Taraba because as those affected are not from his ethnicity.
“These politicians whom in some instances are referred to as senior citizens or elderly political leaders have exploited ethnic and religious clashes to their advantage.
“A good example suffices in Taraba state where a former Minister of Defence is silent over the killings in Taraba State because those being killed are not from his ethnicity.
“They turn a deaf ear if the victims of such nefarious activities are not from their ethnicity and also feign ignorance if their kin perpetrated acts of violence. When factions of political elites compete for political power at the national level based on identity, groups emerge at the subnational level in defence of these identities,” Ebute said.
According to him, “Most politicians hide under cover of farmers-herders’ crisis to perpetrate evil in the society.
“They arm and sponsor militia groups to wreak havoc. This much has been witnessed in situations where there has been a hasty ascribing any form of crime or criminality to a particular ethnicity or religion,” Ebute said.
