The Federal Government declared on
Tuesday that the gun-wielding herdsmen, attacking and killing residents
of communities in various part of the country, were members of a terror
group based outside the country.
The Minister of State for Agriculture,
Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, stated this while addressing a public
hearing on the attacks on farmers by herdsmen across the country,
organised by the Joint Senate Committees on Agriculture and Rural
Development and that of National Security and Intelligence.
The minister explained that most of the
herdsmen, arrested by security agents for launching bloody attacks on
Nigerians, had confessed that they were citizens of some countries that
bordered the northern part of Nigeria.
Lokpobiri told the committee that the
herdsmen they arrested could not speak any Nigerian languages, which had
further established their claims of being foreigners.
He said, “We have discovered that the
herdsmen, attacking Nigerians across the country, are not Fulani but
another gang of Boko Haram insurgents from other countries.
“Those arrested cannot speak Fulani or
any other Nigerian language. Fulani herdsmen are going about with their
legitimate business, looking for something to take care of their
family.”
He attributed the uncontrollable mass
movement of the herdsmen from the northern part of the country to the
South to drought, which is currently ravaging the North and the
unfortunate activities of the Boko Haram insurgents in the North-East
geopolitical zone.
Lokpobiri said government had concluded
plans to establish ranches across the country as currently being done in
advanced countries such as the United States and Saudi Arabia, which
produced high quality milk and beef.
He added that cattle in Nigeria could not produce the required quantity of milk because of the mobile nature of rearing them.
He explained that nine states had
already volunteered to donate at least 5,000 hectares of land to be used
as ranches, saying only 144, out of the 415 ranches established in the
past, were currently functional.
The minister said since the government
knew that ranches without grasses were useless, the Federal Government
was considering importing seed grass into the country to enhance their
protein intake.
He explained that in order to increase
the number of 19 million cows in the country, the Federal Government
also planned to import semen from Europe to be injected into female cows
so that they could produce many calves at a time.
Stakeholders, in their various
submissions, supported the establishment of ranches but expressed
divergent views on the creation of grazing reserve routes as currently
being proposed by some people through a bill in the House of
Representatives.
While Fulani herdsmen, under the aegis
of the Miyetti Allah, expressed support for the creation of special
grazing routes for their cattle across some states from the North to the
South, farmers in the various states disagreed with them.
The National Legal Adviser of Miyetti
Allah, Mr. Bello Tukur, said the cattle breeders supported the creation
of grazing reserve routes and the establishment of a federal ministry
for livestock development.
The representative of the Tiv ethnic
nationality, Mr. Edward Ujege; representative of the Igbo farmers, Mr.
Paddy Njoku; and the representatives of the Plateau State Government,
among others, vehemently opposed the creation of grazing routes to avoid
clashes.
They also suggested adequate
sensitisation on the proposed bill on grazing reserve currently before
the federal parliament to avoid any form of misconception.
The Chairman of the joint Senate panel,
Senator Abdullahi Adamu, however, caused a stir when he told the
stakeholders, who were opposed to the idea of grazing reserve routes,
that the nation’s constitution guarantees freedom of movement and rights
of Nigerians to live in any part of the country.
He said, “Nobody can stop government
from acquiring land anywhere in Nigeria. Government is government. If
anybody thinks he is violent, government has monopoly of violence.”
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