Killer Fulani herdsmen won’t enter Nigeria if we have Trump’s immigration policy —Fani-Kayode

Former Nigerian Aviation Minister, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has said Fulani herdsmen from border nations won’t have their way into Nigeria had the Federal Government developed stringent immigration policy like that of US President Donald Trump.

Some killings in the northern part of the country have been attributed to Fulani herdsmen who were said to have infiltrated the country from neighbouring Niger Republic, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Chad.

The Trump administration has so far imposed certain visa restrictions on some countries including Nigeria, the latest being barring Nigerians from the 2022 US visa lottery.

However, the former minister, who is a staunch supporter of Trump in the 2020 US presidential election, said the Republican candidate has been able to protect America from infiltration by terrorists with his strict immigration laws.

According to him, Trump is a “hardliner with the issue of terror” and Nigeria needs him to defeat the war against Boko Haram and other terror elements.

He said Trump was the only US president in world history to challenge the Nigerian President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to “stop killing Christians in Northern Nigeria”.

Fani-Kayode, who spoke on Tuesday in a PUNCH Facebook Live Interview, said he has been passionate about the US election because “whatever happens in this election impacts heavily on my country and the rest of the world”.

He said, “Whatever happens there will affect Africa and Nigeria generally. In a country like ours where we have Boko Haram, the world-leading terrorist organisation, according to international terror index; Fulani herdsmen, the fourth world-leading terrorist organisation, according to the same organisation; where you have the Islamic State West Africa Province; where you have SARS protests or anti-SARS protests, it is very important that we know that the most powerful man in the world has a vested interest in what is going on in our country.

“For us in Nigeria, who will help us with Boko Haram? Who will help us with ISWAP? Who will help us mount pressure on our government to do something about Fulani herdsmen? You need to have the most powerful man in the world showing interest in Nigeria.”

Continuing, the minister said though Trump has been criticised for some of his policies, the Federal Government needs his immigration policy to keep killer Fulani herdsmen from entering Nigeria.

“He may be introducing policies that affect some people more than others, in terms of wanting to keep his country for his people and make his country great again. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I would do the same if I was the president of Nigeria. I would build walls, keep people out from coming in.

“These are immigration policies and he (Trump) said it that he didn’t want people coming in. The broader policy for me makes a lot of sense which is that we don’t want people coming in illegally.

“If we have a policy like that in Nigeria, we wouldn’t have Fulanis coming into our borders throughout the north to come and kill our people in Katsina, Zamfara and kill our people in Sokoto. If we have a good immigration policy, we won’t have that,” he stated.