A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has said that he owes nobody any apology for describing Fulani herdsmen as tsetse flies and murderers.
Fani-Kayode was responding to tweets by the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria Chairman, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, who accused him of hate crime.
Odinkalu, had on Twitter on Wednesday, lashed out at Fani-Koyode, promising to lodge a complaint against him to the Nigerian Police Force.
According to the NHRC boss, it is not proper to ask Nigerians to leave a particular section of the country.
Fani-Kayode, he added, should not have resorted to calling an entire race names for an offence committed by a few individuals.
He added that it was “unlawful to advocate mass removal of Nigerians from parts of their own country.”
Such a comment, he said, should not have come from a former minister and lawyer.
But Fani-Kayode, who recently changed his name on social media to Olufemi Olu-Kayode, disagreed with the NHRC chairman, declaring that he owed nobody any apology.
He tweeted, “It is those gutless cowards that seek to play down the murder of others that are guilty of hate crimes and not those that call a spade a spade.”
He added, “Those that say that we must remain silent when aliens invade our land, rape our women and kill our people shall fail. We will resist evil. I support the call by the Afenifere that all Fulani herdsmen should be banned from the South-West. We do not want these killers in our midst.”
In an article, the ex-minister justified the call by a section of the South-West that the cattle rearers should leave the region.
The call followed an allegation that the herdsmen were responsible for the recent kidnap of a chieftain of the Afenifere, Chief Olu Falae.
“These herdsmen have become the pests of our nation. They are like the East African tsetse flies: wherever they go they suck blood out of their hosts and, like the locust, they destroy everything in their path. They are like leeches: they indulge in a parasitic mode of nutrition and they suck the blood of the carcass until their victim is left for dead.
“Like the Arab Janjaweed, they are only known for the most hideous of things. This includes terror, intimidation, theft, murder, rape, abduction, mutilation, violation of the rights of others, destruction of the land and crops of farmers and destruction of property.
“Anyone that doubts this should ask the people of the north central zone what they have been suffering in the hands of these herdsmen for the last 50 years. This is especially so in Plateau, Benue, Niger, Kwara, Nassarawa, Taraba and Adamawa states.
“Yet, up until 20 years ago this was essentially a northern problem and it did not affect the south. Sadly, that has changed. It has now become a national plague that knows no boundaries and whose poison threatens to consume us all.
“In the last few years, the herdsmen have attacked, ravaged and pillaged many rural communities south of the River Niger and they have slaughtered and raped thousands of innocent people in the South-South, the South-East and the South-Western zones of our country,” Fani-Kayode wrote.
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Human Rights Commission of Nigeria Chairman, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu,unfortunately is ignorant and doesn’t know what he is talking about — If that is a hate crime, I have news for him — what then is all the cold blooded murder that have been committed by the criminal Fulanis??? It is of course genocide, every where the Fulanis go, they must kill people. They kill children, women and young adults.