Bala Mohammed’s Burden of Terrorism Financing Allegation 

Is the allegation of terrorism financing purportedly levelled against Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State linked to his previous position on the influx of foreign herdsmen accused of perpetrating insecurity in the country? Ejiofor Alike asks

At the peak of the invasions of Nigerian communities by foreign herdsmen in 2019, the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, had stirred the hornet’s nest when he insisted that Nigeria should not close her borders against these foreign invaders because they do not have a single nationality.

As the dust raised by his comment settled two years later, the governor justified the wielding of AK-47 rifles by herders, claiming the weapons were for self-defence.

Speaking in February 2021 at the closing ceremony of the Press Week of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Bauchi State Council, Governor Mohammed had faulted the steps taken by the then Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State and the late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, to curb the menace of the herders who had already turned Benue State into a killing field.

Mohammed reportedly said: “And now, the Fulani man is practising the tradition of trans-human, pastoralism; he has been exposed to the dangers of the forests, the animals, and now, the cattle rustlers, who carry guns, kill him and take away his commonwealth, his cows; he had no option than to carry AK-47 and defend himself because the society and the government are not protecting him.

“It is not his fault; it is the fault of the government and the people; you don’t criminalise all of them because in every tribe there are criminals. You should be very sensitive.”

For many Nigerians, including Ortom and Akeredolu, the Bauchi State governor was dancing on the graves of the thousands of victims of foreign herdsmen.

Speaking later on a television programme, Governor Mohammed had stated that the use of “AK-47 is a figure of speech for protection.” 

“It is a figure of speech to show you the despondence, the desperation and frustration and the agony that this particular person is exposed to by his own people, by his own tribe and by other tribes who have all seen him as a criminal and therefore, he has the inalienable right to protect himself,” he added.

Following the widespread criticisms from many Nigerians, who accused the governor of supporting criminality, his spokesman, Mukhtar Gidado, issued a statement, saying his principal’s comment was taken out of context.

Earlier in September 2019 when Nigerians were lamenting the influx of foreign herders who were sacking indigenous Nigerians and displacing them from their ancestral homes, the governor had insisted that the Nigerian borders should not be closed against the foreign herders.

According to him, a herder from Chad, Niger and other neighbouring countries is “a global or African person”.

He also insisted that these foreign herders would benefit from the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) being championed by the federal government to accommodate the herdsmen and their livestock in designated colonies.

In his strange argument, the governor stated that it would be inappropriate to deprive the “transnational Fulani” of the benefits of the federal government’s livestock plan simply because they were not Nigerians.

Mohammed said: “I think there is a lot of mistrust and misconception as regards the Fulani man. The Fulani man is a global or African person. He moved from The Gambia to Senegal and his nationality is Fulani. As a person, I may have my relations in Cameroon but they are also Fulani. I am a Fulani man from my maternal side; we will just have to take this as our own heritage – something that is African. So, we cannot just close our borders and say the Fulani man is not a Nigerian.” 

The governor’s position that foreigners should benefit from Nigerian taxpayers’ money was viewed by many as a serious risk to Nigeria’s sovereignty.

The question is: What is the essence of nationhood if foreign herders are accommodated in Nigeria because of the frivolous claim that they do not have a single nationality?

In his words: “We are already accommodating them. Do you delineate and really know who is not a Nigerian Fulani man? They are all Nigerians because their identity, their citizenship is Nigerian even though they have relatives from all over the world. So, presumably, they are Nigerians because they move all over and have relations all over. That is why our population in Nigeria is fluid.”

Security analysts who were shocked that a governor could claim that the country’s population is fluid, described his position as a threat to Nigerian security, citizenship and nationhood.

According to these analysts, no serious nation has a fluid population.

They cited the case of Yoruba who are found in the Republic of Benin, Togo, Ghana, and several other countries but the foreign Yoruba do not have the same status in Nigeria as the Yoruba in South-west.

Rather than prosecuting these foreign invaders and their sponsors, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, whose actions and decisions were beclouded by ethnic and religious affiliations, attempted to use the failed Water Resources Bill 2020, and the RUGA Settlement scheme to dispossess indigenous communities of their ancestral lands for the permanent settlement of these foreigners in the country.

Is the current allegation against the Bauchi State governor linked to his previous utterances on these sensitive issues?

Is the governor being suspected of procuring arms for these violent herders for their self-defence?

Or is the allegation just a political weapon deployed against him for refusing to join the All Progressives Congress (APC) as he alleged?

These are some of the questions awaiting answers when the prosecution opens its case in the trial of the state Commissioner for Finance, Yakubu Adamu and his co-defendants at the Federal High Court in Abuja.

Governor Mohammed recently accused the federal government of hanging an allegation of financing terrorism on his neck and using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to persecute him and others who refused to defect to the APC.

The governor, who denied the allegation of financing terrorism, vowed that if the APC-led government fails to stop the persecution, “we are going to declare war.”

His finance commissioner, Adamu, was arraigned by the EFCC, alongside Balarabe Abdullahi Ilelah, Aminu Mohammed Bose and Kabiru Yahaya Mohammed on December 31, 2025 on a 10-count charge bordering on alleged terrorism financing to the tune of $9.7million.

Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja had denied the bail application filed by the commissioner, and his co-defendants, noting that while the Constitution presumes every accused person innocent until proven guilty, that principle is not absolute when national security is at stake.

The judge ordered their remand in Kuje Correctional Centre, pending their trial.

Nigerians are eagerly waiting for the prosecution to open its case for them to know if a prima facie case will be established against the commissioner or if the allegation is mere political witch-hunts to punish the governor for not defecting to APC as he claimed.