Following a video in which notorious bandit kingpin, Bello Turji, blamed the escalating banditry in the North-West on policies introduced by former governors Attahiru Bafarawa of Sokoto and Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara, President Bola Tinubu has been asked to order the arrest and prosecution of the two ex-governors.
A coalition of inter-faith religious leaders in northern Nigeria, Concerned Northern Inter-Faith Clergy for Peace, made the call in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja.
The clerics, in the statement signed by Bishop Sunday Bawa, Imam Sheikh Yusuf Sarki, Bishop Pius Dauda and others, said the two ex-governors bear responsibility for laying the foundations of the rampant banditry bedeviling the North-West.
The clerics cited the video released by Turji, in which Bafarawa and Yerima were accused of seizing and selling vast grazing reserves designated for herders and arming vigilante groups, known as Yan Banga.
The Yan Banga were alleged to have targeted Fulani communities in the North-West.
The video noted that the actions of the governors sparked ethnic tensions, leading to cycles of reprisal attacks that escalated to the current wave of kidnappings, massacres and cattle rustling.
“Even though Turji is a confessed terrorist, we cannot ignore his words,” the clerics said, noting that the allegations point to deep-rooted issues of land dispossession and armed vigilantism that allowed criminal gangs to evolve into monsters that now torment the region.
The inter-faith body, comprising imams, pastors, bishops, and other spiritual leaders, expressed solidarity with bereaved families who have also petitioned President Tinubu for an investigation into the claims.
Highlighting the devastating toll of banditry, which they described as an unfolding genocide, the clerics cited figures from Amnesty International and the National Human Rights Commission, which indicate that over 13,485 deaths were recorded from banditry between 2010 and May 2023.
Records also indicate that at least 2,266 persons were killed in the first half of 2025.
Various reports also document thousands kidnapped, injured, or displaced, with economic losses running into trillions of naira due to disrupted farming, trade, and payment for ransoms.
The clerics criticised responses from Bafarawa and Yerima as empty denials. In separate responses to the allegations, the former governors claimed no significant banditry existed when they left office in 2007 and questioned the timing of the accusations.
The religious leaders therefore appealed to President Bola Tinubu to “immediately direct the arrest and prosecution” of the two former governors for “alleged acts that laid the foundations of this terror”.
While also calling for a transparent investigation into the allegations, they also called for the implementation of measures to address poverty, land disputes and other root causes of insecurity in the North-West.
Banditry: Clerics call for Bafarawa, Yerima’s arrest over Bello Turji’s claims
