Ikpeazu: Nothing like Fulani herdsmen… foreigners invading Nigeria

Okezie Ikpeazu, governor of Abia state, says people from outside the country, not Fulani herdsmen are not responsible for killings in Nigeria.

The governor said this while speaking with journalists in Abuja on Thursday during a visit to TOS Television Network.

Ikpeazu said instead of investing in arms and ammunition, the federal government should spend more money on intelligence.

He said intelligence would enable the government know that Fulani herdsmen are not responsible for killings, but that the country is being infiltrated by people from other countries.

“In an asymmetric battle, you don’t know where your enemy is coming from so what you do is to change the arrangement. The arrangement should be 65 percent intelligence gathering, research and development, and only 30 percent for boots on ground. Because if you don’t give intelligence to boots on ground, who are they going to battle? How do they know? Because nobody is wearing any uniform,” he said.

“Why is it difficult for us to know that this country is being infiltrated? There’s nothing like Fulani herdsmen, we have people from outside Nigeria, from Chad, from Mali, from all these countries invading us. It is not Nigerians killing Nigerians. This country is being seriously infiltrated and we are not spending money on immigration. We’re not manning our borders. So if we send policemen to go out there and look for ten criminals, whereas we have opened flags for 200 criminals to come, how are they going to do it?

“So I think we should spend more money on intelligence. Why is it more difficult for us to track source of funds, why is it more difficult for us to track source of ammunition?”

The governor noted that the enemies of the country need to be defined as it would help in fighting insecurity.

“We can’t continue to fight this battle unless we define the true sense of the word, the enemies of this country. We should stop flipping the dictionary to find words, Fulani herdsmen, bandits, IPOB. We are looking for names. Anybody who goes to abduct our children, abduct a clergyman, abducts a traditional ruler, burns a police station, is an enemy of state.

“Can we make a determination to say, wherever that person comes from, the person should be treated as enemy of state? Because if we don’t have the will power to make that determination, even the morale of the troops on ground will be questionable. Their loyalty will be questionable.”