President Muhammadu Buhari, on Tuesday, narrated his meeting with American President Donald Trump at the White House.
Buhari was speaking in Abuja at the First Year Ministerial Performance Review Retreat of his second term.
He said he was the only African amongst the least developed nations that Trump invited in the White House.
He said: “I don’t think I can finish this speech without one or two digressions, which is specifically to you ministers, permanent secretaries and our supporters.
“I believe I was about the only African among the less developed countries that the president of the United States invited.
“And when I was in his office, only he and myself, he looked at me in the face and said why are you killing Christians?
“If you were the one, I wonder how you will react. I hope what I was feeling inside did not betray me before him.
“So, I understood it.
“The problem between cattle rearers and stagnant farmers, which is older than me not to talk of him (President Donald Trump), because I know I am a couple of years older than him, were happening.
“It’s climate change with population growth and the misunderstanding of the culture of the cattle rearers.
“If you have 50 cows and they eat grass or something, any rout to their water pond, they will follow it, it doesn’t matter whose farm it was.
“The First Republic set of leaders were the most responsible leaders we’ve ever had.
“So, I tried and explained to him (Trump) that this has gotten nothing to do with ethnicity or religion. It’s a cultural thing which the respective leaders failing the nation.”
“I asked the Minister of Agriculture to get a gazette of the early 60s, which delineated the cattle routes, the grazing areas, why they used meagre resources then to put water dams, windmills, and even sanitary department.
“So, any cattle rearer who allowed his cattle to somebody’s farm was arrested, taken before a court, the farmer is called to submit his bill then the judge will say if cattle rearer couldn’t pay, his cattle were sold and the farmer is paid.
“But subsequent leaders, the VIPs, they encroached on the cattle routes, they took over the cattle rearing areas.
“There was a time I went to Bayelsa State and I saw cattle rearers there. So, I suspected they were going into the Atlantic.”
