By Oyibo Salihu
Lokoja
Kogi state Governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, has declared that his administration would never enact an anti-grazing law that would prevent the Fulani from carrying out their cattle rearing activities in the state.
The governor, who stated this in Lokoja yesterday at an interactive session with farmers and herdsmen in the state, said by the Constitution “every citizen has the right of movement.”
According to him, his administration will not enact a law that will hinder the herdsmen from performing their legitimate businesses in the state.
He said: “The country belongs to all of us as long as you are a Nigerian; Kogi state belongs to all of us, including the good Fulani who are willing to live in peace and carry out their cattle rearing activities.
“No part of the state will be forbidden to anybody; I will not enact any law that will forbid the activities of the Fulani, instead I will enact a law that will guarantee the economic development of the state.”
While guaranteeing the safety of lives and property of the Fulani, Bello charged them not to allow their cattle to destroy farmlands, saying that “if they cannot curtail the excesses of their cattle rearers, government will not hesitate to do it in the interest of peace in the state.”
In his remark, the Ohimege of Koton Karfi, Alhaji Abdulrazak Isah Koto, decried the decision of some Fulani to allow children below the age of 10 years to rear over 100 cattle without considering the implication, stressing that as a way forward the leaders of the Fulani should discourage the under-age to graze the cattle.
Earlier, the chairman of the Meyetti Alllah Cattle Rearers Association in the state, Alhaji Usman Girdo, lamented that the Fulani cattle rearers in the state had become an object of ridicule as a result of killings often meted on them and their cattle.
Girdo disclosed that in June, this year, over 50 cattle were attacked and killed in Omala local government area of the state.
He appealed to the state government to look into the causes of incessant Fulani herdsmen and farmers’ crises “and find a lasting solution to them.”
