Chairman of the Southern Governors Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu, says the anti-open grazing law, will be enforced vigorously.
He said this while addressing the Fulani Socio-Cultural Association, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, for opposing the enactment of the law by governors in the region.
Akeredolu insisted that no cultural practice permitted criminality, banditry, rape and armed robbery.
The governor’s statement comes after the Fulani Socio-Cultural Association asked the National Assembly to intervene and stop some state governors from the anti-open grazing laws targeted at Fulani nomads.
Its National Secretary of the association, Mr Saleh Alhassan said the law would affect the peace and stability in local communities and intensify cattle rustling.
But Akeredolu, in a statement issued and signed by his Senior Special Assistant SSA, Special Duties & Strategy, Dr Doyin Odebowale, in Akure, disagrees with the National Secretary.
The statement reads, ” the government has a video clip of the press statement issued by a so-called association of cattle breeders, Miyetti Allah Kataul Hore, through its secretary, one Saleh AlHassan.
“This uncouth, uncultured and, evidently, deracinated vagrant, left no one in doubt as regards the level of support certain criminal elements, like he, enjoy, deplorably.
“This man admits, without qualms, that members of his association have been frustrated to the point of taking to banditry and other forms of criminality to “fight poverty”.
“He makes too much weather of a cultural practice associated with an ethnic group and expects all other ethnic groups to accept such backwardness and adjust, accordingly, or be ready to face the ceaseless onslaught of the denizens of the forests, even those from other countries, who must rape, rob, maim, kill and despoil in response to “climate change”.
“They claim to be above the law of any State in the Federation. They warn of the imminent breach of peace and promotion of pervasive anarchy if they are not allowed to ravage the sweat and toil of the long-suffering farmers who don’t count for much in the scheme of things in their estimation.
“They thank the Federal Government and ask its functionaries and the National Assembly to ensure that they continue to kill, maim, rape and dispossess their victims, whose citizenship is not shrouded in any historical obscurantism and dependence on any nebulous protocol for dubious integration, with the ultimate aim of dispossessing the indigenous owners of the land.
“Any ethnic group, indigenous to the geo-political space known as Nigeria, should not be desperate to appropriate other people’s lands to assuage banditry, rape and robbery.
“Modernity imposes certain obligations on any social group which claims a membership of the human race.
“It is arrogant, and this is being mild, for any assemblage of criminal upstarts, to seek to issue orders to the elected representatives of the people on the best way possible to administer their states.
“It is indulgence taken too far for a group of private businessmen to seek to take over people’s lands because of the mistaken belief of support for banditry.
“There is no ethnic group which does not parade an array of professionals in all walks of life.
“There is no ethnic stock bereft of sound and principled agents of advancement in a transitional society.
“It is disingenuous and fraudulent for any band of stragglers, certified felons, to paint a highly resourceful people, with the same indolent and retrogressive brush, a befitting epitaph for characters of Saleh Hassan’s felonious hue.
“No cultural practice permits criminality. Banditry, rape and armed robbery should not be attributes of a people.
“Personal businesses must not become the prime occupation of a government of a geo-political space with multi-ethnic groups.
“Our contemporary history is replete with events of brazen treachery as recompense for the warmth and hospitality extended to the undeserving. Various communities live with painful memories and indelible scars.
“We refuse to become slaves in our land. We defeated treachery and unbridled arrogance.
“We are not prepared to cede any part of our ancestral heritage to enjoy “peace and progress” offered by associations of bandits, robbers, kidnappers and rapists.
” Saleh and his sponsors should be content with the resources within his local environment if he is indeed indigenous to Nigeria.
“No part of our land will be given to foreigners who cling to a dubious regional protocol as an instrument validating dispossession.
“Let him practice his cultural practices on his father’s land. His likes will not be permitted to operate with impunity in Ondo State. We will defend our land.
“Ondo State has a law which prohibits open grazing. The Government has a responsibility to implement the law for the benefit of the people of the State and those, who may share in their aspiration for the development of their God-given space”.
Recall that the Lagos state Assembly had on Monday, committed the bill on prohibition of open grazing to committees for consideration.
The anti-open grazing bill was committed to the committee on agriculture after it scaled the second reading.
During the one-day public hearing on the bill that followed on Wednesday, a representative of Miyetti Allah said the ban may give rise to tension and increase the cost of cows in Lagos State.
Mai-Kudu Usman the Secretary, Zonal South West, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN, said this while speaking to lawmakers.
According to Usman: “We can’t rear our cattle in one place, because what the cattle will eat and consume will be very very expensive if I can’t move them around.
“I can assure you that if we are made to graze on a secluded area, the cost of breeding a cow will be very high and the cost to sell one cow will be nothing less than N2 million.
“There is so much attachment between herders and herds to the extent that any inconveniences on the herds are considered as inconveniences on herders and by so doing this will be resisted vehemently. Passing Anti-Open cattle grazing into law can create tension in the state because of the inconveniences it would bring along with it.
“Also, because the Fulani herders are migrating to South West that’s why we are having damages to farmlands. And now the bad eggs among the Fulani herders have turned into bandits.
“Therefore, we are suggesting a deal whereby, when I’m bringing herds, I inform and notify the local government chairman or Baale of the community that I am coming with my cows so that they will know that I am there and be registered.
“But, we have discovered that some strangers called Fulani herders have infiltrated the ranks of Miyatti -Allah. We are taking steps already to weed them out of our group. Miyatti-Alla is a peaceful, and peace-loving group.
“These Fulani herders come from nowhere and damage some people’s farm and that is why we are having problems.
“We are having a national conference of MACBAN to be held in Abuja, next year in January where all issues concerning the Fulani invasion into Miyatti-Allah will be addressed in order to fish them out of our group.”
