The military high command, on Thursday, fingered foreign herders as perpetrators of recent violent attacks on local communities and killings of farmers in Plateau, Benue and other states.
The Director, Defence Media Operations (DMO), Major-General Markus Kangye, disclosed this to newsmen while fielding questions at the bi-weekly media update on military operations against insurgents in the various theaters of operations across the six geo-political zones of the country.
Kangye, speaking about the foreign herders, said: “When you hear them talk in some instances, you’ll be able to decipher whether these people are from here or not, and from the North. For instance, if I speak Hausa and my brother from the South-East speaks Hausa, you’ll know that his Hausa is a borrowed one and Hausa language, like any other language, has different versions and intonations.
“If somebody from Sokoto, for instance, speaks Hausa, and my friend from Katsina speaks Hausa, you’ll hear some differences and somebody from Kano, you’ll hear some differences; so the Hausa spoken in Nigeria has differences between the Hausa spoken in Mali, Central African Republic or Ghana.
“So when we arrest these herders and terrorists, even from the way they speak and appear, it is clear to see and even the hair will tell you that this person is not from Nigeria.
“I think the only community in Nigeria that has hair similar to the Shuwa in the Sahel region is probably the Shuwa Arabs in Borno State, but they don’t even have the same.
“So, one will also admit that many of those terrorising our people are foreigners, even though some of them are also Nigerians.”
Major-General Kangye explained further that “there are some herders who are Nigerians who also get involved in crime, but most of the violence and incessant killings you are hearing in some parts of this country are perpetrated by mostly those who find their way in through the porous borders of our country.”
