A former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria was arrested on 12 August after telling a radio interviewer that the security forces were colluding in attacks on Christian communities in Kaduna State.
Dr Obadiah Mailafia was summoned to the Department of State Services (DSS) in Jos where he was interrogated for six hours about the 55-minute radio interview discussing the escalating violence in Plateau State, where he was born. The interview also raised the issue of Fulani extremist infiltration throughout the country, including southern Nigeria.
Since released on bail, Dr Mailafia claimed that the Nigerian authorities were unable and unwilling to protect the mainly-Christian farming communities in southern Kaduna and that the security forces were colluding in assaults on villages and farms. He added that people who blame “farmer-herder violence” for the killings are “accessories to genocide”.
The former banker’s father was a Christian missionary pastor and he has Muslim aunts, uncles and cousins. He went on to expose that “repentant terrorists” had informed him that an incumbent governor of a northern state is the “commander of Boko Haram in Nigeria”.
“Boko Haram and the bandits are one and the same,” said Dr Mailafia, explaining that they have a sophisticated network and, during lockdown, their planes continued to move freely, transporting ammunitions and money to different parts of the country.
