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Notorious terrorist leader, Bello Turji, has reportedly relinquished some of his weaponry and released 32 kidnapped victims as part of a peace initiative backed by Islamic clerics in Zamfara State.

One of the clerics participated in the conversations, Musa Yusuf, popularly known as Asadus-Sunnah, announced this during a religious meeting in Kaduna on Monday.

He claimed that the development came after several meetings with Turji and other infamous warriors in the Fakai forest, which is situated in Zamfara’s Shinkafi Local Government Area, in July.

Yusuf claims that the people of Shinkafi started the peace negotiations by asking the clerics to persuade Turji to stop the attacks and let farmers access their property.

“We met Mr Turji, Dan Bakkolo, Black, Kanawa, and Malam Ila. The speculation that Dan Bakkolo was killed is not true. These individuals are responsible for the insecurity in the area, and they all agreed to the peace proposals,” Yusuf said.

“We agreed that the Fulanis must be allowed to go to town without being stereotyped or killed by the vigilante.”

According to him, the group gave up part of their weapons in three stages and permitted locals to start farming again in the forest regions that they had previously controlled.

Turji also freed thirty-two people who had been abducted as part of the peace agreement. A video that Yusuf showed demonstrated the challenging terrain that the released prisoners had to traverse in order to get to Turji’s camp.

According to Yusuf, the clerics are still negotiating with Turji in order to achieve a total end to the fighting.

He went on to say that they purposefully did not call for the surrender of all weapons in order to protect Turji from attacks by rival factions that might not be involved in the peace process.

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