Northern coalition to herders: Return home if you’re not safe in South

The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), on Wednesday, advised all law-abiding members of Fulani communities, whose lives and livestock assets are threatened in other parts of the country, to return to the north.

There had been eviction orders to herdsmen in some southern states, especially in Oyo and Ondo States.

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The spokesperson of the group, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, at a press briefing in Abuja, said, “We advise all law-abiding members of Fulani communities whose lives and livestock assets are threatened in other parts of the country without hope for protection from the federal authorities or their host communities, to take steps for immediate relocation to the North by heeding our earlier warning that a government that cannot secure towns, cities and capitals can definitely not be expected to protect those living in forests.”

He said the coalition wondered why the northern governors were supporting a ban on open grazing without first identifying suitable lands and creating grazing reserves and cattle routes after four years government’s promises.

He said: “We emphatically repudiate the stand of the Northern Governors Forum against open grazing without first identifying suitable lands and creating grazing reserves and cattle routes after four years of lying about resettling the pastoralists through vogue initiatives that never materialized.

“We call on the Nigerian public to note that rather than working to ensure a united, secure one Nigeria, the federal government appears to be creating and fanning the present chaotic situation in order to cover its serial misgovernance and pervasive institutional and structural corruption.”

He added the coalition was solidly behind Sheikh Ahmed Gumi’s initiative for engagement that could lead to amnesty, reorientation, reintegration, reassimilation for those who embraced peace and complete crackdown on those who rejected peace.

The CNG spokesperson noted the coalition also supported and encourages “the efforts of the Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi and other reasonable state governments that prefered dialogue to the hardcore counterproductive use of force for further bloodshed preferred by Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai.”