President Muhammad Buhari has blamed the killings across the country to the ‘gunmen trained and armed by Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.”
Buhari made this claim when he was speaking with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby in London.
Buhari said of the killings across the country, “the problem is even older than us,”
“It has always been there, but now made worse by the influx of armed gunmen from the Sahel region into different parts of the West African sub-region.”
“These gunmen were trained and armed by Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. When he was killed, the gunmen escaped with their arms. We encountered some of them fighting with Boko Haram.”
Gaddafi had been Libyan leader for 42 years before he was ousted by a western-backed uprising in his country in 2011. Gaddafi was killed during the uprising, but Libya had since been plunged into a civil war that still lingers nearly seven years later.
President Buhari further drew the line between the rampaging herdsmen and the rustic herdsmen of the past who only went about their business with ‘sticks.’ “Herdsmen that we used to know carried only sticks and maybe a cutlass to clear the way, but these ones now carry sophisticated weapons. ”