President Muhammadu Buhari has criticised some international media outlets and activists for their ‘wrong portrayal’ of the major security challenges Nigeria is faced with.
According to Buhari in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, on Sunday in Abuja, the Boko Haram and Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorism, as well as the spate of kidnappings for ransom, have been transformed by some misinformed global media into a Muslim-on-Christian threat. He also argued that the herder-farmer conflicts in Nigeria is not a matter of religion.
“Yet, in reality there are no religious connotations at all when the primary purpose of these acts is to extract money.
“Then the herder-farmer clashes. While international voices and some Nigerian politicians who seek personal gains from division declare this a matter of religion, for those involved, it is almost entirely a matter of access to water and land.
“Herders have moved their cattle into contact with farmers for millennia.
“But increasingly, due to population pressure, escalating aridity of northern states and climate change, they are forced to travel further south to find grazing lands,” he said.
God is in control of all