President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been urged to order the arrest and prosecution of former Sokoto State Governor, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa, and ex-Zamfara State Governor, Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima, following explosive allegations linking them to the roots of banditry in Nigeria’s North-West.
The call was made by a coalition of inter-faith religious leaders under the banner Concerned Northern Inter-Faith Clergy for Peace, in a statement issued on Wednesday in Abuja.
The clerics said the appeal followed a viral video by notorious bandit kingpin Bello Turji, in which he blamed policies allegedly introduced by the two former governors for triggering the spiral of violence that has ravaged the region for over a decade.
In the statement jointly signed by Bishop Sunday Bawa, Imam Sheikh Yusuf Sarki, Bishop Pius Dauda and other religious leaders, the group accused Bafarawa and Yerima of laying the foundations for the insecurity by allegedly seizing and selling designated grazing reserves and arming vigilante groups known as Yan Banga.
According to the clerics, the vigilantes were accused of targeting Fulani communities, igniting ethnic tensions that later degenerated into cycles of reprisals, mass killings, kidnappings and cattle rustling.
“Even though Bello Turji is a confessed terrorist, his allegations cannot simply be dismissed,” the statement said, arguing that the claims point to deeper issues of land dispossession and armed vigilantism that allowed criminal gangs to mutate into the violent networks terrorising the North-West today.
The inter-faith body, comprising imams, pastors and bishops, also expressed solidarity with bereaved families who have petitioned President Tinubu to investigate the allegations.
Describing the scale of violence as an “unfolding genocide,” the clerics cited figures from Amnesty International and the National Human Rights Commission showing that at least 13,485 people were killed by banditry between 2010 and May 2023. They added that no fewer than 2,266 persons were killed in the first half of 2025 alone.
They further noted that thousands more have been kidnapped, injured or displaced, with economic losses running into trillions of naira due to destroyed farmlands, disrupted trade and ransom payments.
The clerics dismissed responses from Bafarawa and Yerima—who separately denied the allegations and claimed that banditry was not prevalent when they left office in 2007—as “empty denials.”
They consequently urged President Tinubu to “immediately direct the arrest and prosecution” of the former governors for “alleged acts that laid the foundations of the terror currently consuming the region.”
While demanding a transparent and independent investigation, the religious leaders also called for broader measures to tackle poverty, land disputes and other root causes fueling insecurity in the North-West.
