Vote for Buhari, vote for continued herdsmen killings – PDP

With less than fifty days to Nigeria’s general election, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, has said that a vote for incumbent President Muhammudu Buhari is a vote for continued herdsmen killings of farmers and forceful annexation and occupation of their ancestral lands as being currently witnessed.

In a statement signed by Bembga Iortyom, the State Publicity Secretary & Chairman, Publicity Sub-Committee of the Benue PDP State Campaign Organisation, 2019, the party said the recent endorsement of Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2019 elections by Fulani herdsmen umbrella organisation, popularly known as Miyetti Allah, is a tacit acceptance that they enjoy the support of the presidency.

Iortyom in the statement said Miyetti Allah’s grouse against the PDP Candidate, as expressed by their leaders, was that Atiku Abubakar is not friendly to their agenda, despite being a Fulani; conversely their endorsement of President Buhari unambiguously means in him they have found an ally and a friend of their cause.

He said while it is normal for interest blocs in any society to seek to promote and advance their cause, Miyetti Allah, is clearly a supremacist one which is steeped in the most brazen form of ethnocentrisms ever witnessed since the coming to political independence of Nigeria.

“So far Miyetti Allah has been noted mostly for coming out to publicly take responsibility for the killings which have been perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen against farming populations across Nigeria, mostly in Benue State and in some states in the middle belt region of the country

According to him, Muhammadu Buhari had even prior to his becoming President never hidden his ethnocentric inclinations, both in words and deeds.

“He is as well an arch proponent of the fussing of religious cleavages into our political space, very notably by his shocking declaration during one of his many presidential bids that “Muslims should vote for Muslims, while Christians should vote for Christians”.

Iortyom said Atiku Abubakar on the other hand, though a Fulani by ethnic origins, is not an extremist.

He said the PDP presidential aspirant all through his public life has refused to be sucked into the wave of Fulani supremacist agenda being championed by Miyetti Allah, and by so doing has incurred their wrath provoking them to come out in open and reckless declaration of war on his candidacy.

“Miyetti Allah’s endorsement of Buhari’s candidacy is a clear statement which Nigerians must understand lucidly for what it truly is; that with Buhari as president, the bloodshed and carnage being wrecked on them by Fulani herdsmen is sure to continue.

He added: “Their declaration of war on Atiku’s candidacy on the other hand has only one interpretation; that even they know that with him as president their nefarious agenda and criminality which has so far gone unchecked under Buhari, will have no place in Nigeria.”