Former governor of Kano state, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, yesterday, warned against playing politics with the farmers, herdsmen’s clashes, noting that the issue “portends big danger for the country.” Addressing journalists at the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation’s two-day Security Roundtable on the Herdsmen, Farmers’ Conflict, the former education minister described the brewing crises between herdsmen and farmers, including other social vices, as a matter of life and death which should not be politicized.
The summit aimed at finding lasting solution to the farmers/ herders clashes and other similar communal conflicts across the country, including kidnapping and rural banditry in the north. He said: “Part of the guidelines to address this issue is to be nonpolitical and non-partisan.
We will not allow anybody to politicise this matter, it is a matter of life and death, people are losing lives and properties are being lost, so which politics are you playing?
“If you want to come and govern people, if the people are dying and their properties, their houses are being burnt, who are you coming to govern? So, this issue is very important to resolve.” Shekarau, who is Secretary, Board of Trustees of the Foundation, said the crises “bedevilling Nigeria, if not resolved, will only increase poverty and further collapse the economy, as there may be no peaceful buying and selling in the country.
“This will affect the economy, because if there is no peace, there will be no peaceful buying and selling and poverty will increase. So, it is a very serious matter and we are very much concerned here at Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation. “It is one of the greatest legacies of Sir Ahmadu Bello, which is to unite people, and he travelled far and near. There was no conflict no matter how small that Ahmadu Bello will not even go there to reconcile the matter.
This is exactly what we want to uphold and to encourage.” Drawing a link between farmers, herders’ clashes and unity of the country, the ex-governor said both are interconnected and one would easily affect the other.
“If there is suspicion, herdsmen being suspected, farmers being suspected to the point of killing, then it could cause conflict. As a trained teacher and guidance counsellor, I know 90 per cent of conflict is as a result of suspicion. “When any group or any individual suspects that he is being denied his right and nothing is being done, people take the law into their hands.
And this is partly the reason government must see this thing as its own business totally, and the communities, traditional institutions, local government and various organisations, everybody must own it up. “It’s not just the issue of herdsmen and farmers, you can see in some communities, it has degenerated into tribal. Very soon, some people will make it like religious, and therefore it becomes a problem of the country.”
