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The vans had waited outside the gate for hours before Bello Abdullahi Bodejo, Nigeria’s best-known herders’ leader, walked out of one jail and into another.
On August 28, he met the conditions of a bail bond worth about $745,000 and was released by Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency. Officers of the State Security Service, the agency Nigerians call the secret police, waited at the gate. His wife, Hauwa Bodejo, told the Daily Trust newspaper that three vans took him away. Days later, the agency had still not said what the charges were.
Bodejo has been arrested and detained repeatedly since January 2024. He has faced terrorism-related allegations and, more recently, money-laundering allegations. No court has convicted him.
Bodejo leads Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, one of Nigeria’s largest associations of Fulani herders. In the Middle Belt, where the Muslim north meets the Christian south, residents of farming villages say Fulani gunmen raid them at night and take their land. The association denies this and says herders are the ones being killed.
On the night of August 17 this year, gunmen struck three farming villages in Plateau state at the same hour and killed 27 people. Similar raids have emptied hamlets across Benue and Nasarawa, while those who carry them out are often not arrested.
One trail leads to officials in the opposition-controlled Bauchi government. The other leads to an allegation against Nasarawa Governor Abdullahi Sule, a member of President Bola Tinubu’s ruling APC — but hasn’t produced any charge against him.
FOUR ARRESTS, NO VERDICT
On January 23, 2024, military intelligence arrested Bodejo near the capital and accused him of setting up an ethnic militia. The government later dropped the case, and a judge freed him.
In December 2024, the same agency held him for 60 days…
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Read Full Article by Bala Augie at moneycentral.com.ng
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