The Secretary General, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore Fulani Socio-Cultural Association, Saleh Alhassan, has insisted that herdsmen did not perpetrate killings in Benue, Plateau and Taraba States.
Alhassan said those who set up vigilance groups in those states should be held responsible.
He lamented that the groups acted beyond their limits and took laws into their own hands.
He said: “Every crisis has its own uniqueness. If you go to Taraba, like the one on the Mambilla Plateau, the ongoing project on the Mambilla dam and the compensation that would be paid to communities who own land runs into millions and that is causing issues because the herders that own the land and some elites.
“Some herdsmen bought the land, with title documents, on them, but now, some elites want to be the ones to collect the compensation and they are killing the herdsmen. When you talk about Zamfara, it’s a pure banditry created by some elites in the state. Now that the whole thing has dawned on them, they are looking for whom to blame.
“They created the vigilance group, comprising farmers. We went there in 2014 and said the vigilance group was carrying out arrest and extra-judicial killing of herdsmen, by tagging them as criminals.
“They became law unto themselves and as a consequence of that, the herdsmen also created their own vigilance group. So, the two vigilance groups started fighting and both have become criminals and monsters that are lawless.”
