The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), says
United States President, Donald Trump, once called him into his office at the
White House and asked him, “Why are you killing Christians?”
Buhari said though he was pained by the allegation, he took
his time to explain to his US counterpart that the killings of Christians in
Nigeria “has got nothing to do with ethnicity or religion.”
The President said he told Trump that the problem stemmed
from constant clashes between cattle-herders and farmers, describing it as a
“cultural” problem.
He further blamed the farmer-herder clashes on “climate
change and population growth” as well as the “leadership failure” of previous
governments.
Buhari spoke on Tuesday at his second-term First Year
Ministerial Performance Review Retreat in Abuja.
Buhari had won his re-election in 2019 after defeating the
opposition Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar, with about
four million votes in the February 23 poll.
He had on August 21, 2019, constituted his second-term
cabinet and had last month listed 35 policies, programmes and projects as his
second-term achievements.
The First Year Ministerial Performance Review Retreat
focused on the examination of the performance of ministers and other officials
in the President’s cabinet.
The President on Tuesday said, “I believe I was about the
only African amongst the least developed countries that the President of the
United States invited and when I was in his office, only myself and himself,
only God is a witness, he looked at me in the face and said, ‘Why are you
killing Christians?’
“I wondered if it were you, I wondered how you will react. I
hope what I was feeling inside did not betray me before him. So, I understood
it.
“The problem between cattle-rearers and stagnant farmers, I
know which is older than me, not to talk of him, because I think I’m a couple
of years older than him, were happening. And there was climate change and
population growth.
“I tried to explain to him that it has got nothing to do
with ethnicity or religion. It’s a cultural thing which the respective
leadership failed the nation.”
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