Farmers across the Niger Delta region and South Eastern Nigeria have decried continuous herder’s attack on people’s farmland by these stranger elements who invade their farms and destroy their crops unjustly without remorseful feeling.
The farmers have also called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Governor’s forum to as a matter of urgency remove Miyetti Allah’s anti reaching policy across the zone because of its negative multiplier effect on native farmlands.
Recall that same open grazing of cows on people’s farmlands have spread virtually across all the states in the Southern region of the country.
Some state like Imo, Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi, Cross River, Delta, Rivers, Akwa Ibiom, Benue are seriously suffering from the dictates of herders attack on farms. The Herders have also resorted in serial cases of kidnapping cum adduction recorded in the states mentioned.
Niger Delta Farmers have therefore alleged that herders are causing farmers economic hardship, ranching is the way to go, Herders should restrain their cows, Powerful cartel using herders to test-run expansionist agenda, We have a burden to defend our farmlands, Herders cannot command the country policy as stated.
The farmers warned they would not condone herdsmen unwarranted incursions into their farmlands, where cows ate and damaged the crops they labored to cultivate.
The further noted that the planting season was about to commence and they needed to alert President Tinubu and all the South -South Governors.
Speaking with Newsmen, the group who where made up of farmers and stakeholders demanded the government should as a matter of importance provide land for reaching while the herders move their cows there and pay some stipend. Anybody discovered outside the secured zone will be seen as a trespasser and be treated as such and prosecuted.
The group who are anti-open, grazing faulted the contention of Miyetti Allah, a Fulani socio-cultural Association, that herders were not empowered to practice ranching.
The Bill before the National Assembly is for an act to establish the National animal husbandry and ranches commission for the regulation, management, preservation, and connected purposes in 2024.
But surprisingly, the National secretary of the Miyetti Allah, Saleh Alhassan who insisted last year that the group will resist the Bill, said: “Laws are meant to promote love, peace, harmony and development. The law will not work. No one will respect such a law because you can’t come overnight and destroy our economy through a pronouncement. How many laws have they enacted and how many are working in this country? They want to create a crisis. They want to push us , herders’ into rebellion and we say they will fail “
The spokesperson for Northern Elders Forum , Abdul -Azeez Suleiman in a recent interview said, NEF recognizes the importance of addressing the challenges posed by open grazing.
Meanwhile, the Northern Elders Forum, which asked the Federal Government to initiate policies and programs to transition of open grazing to ranching, safeguard herders’ interests and address security challenges has long endorsed the Miyetti Allah’s position in this matter.
The group comprising of farmers and stakeholders of the South South have called the Federal Government and SS Governors to warn herders to stop forthwith , invading people’s crop. Accordingly, “We want the FG and Governors across the affected states to do the needful before the herders attack will escalate to communal clash and possibly turn into insurgency, food crises and needless skirmishes.
Let the herders control their cows at approved locations and not to be moving cows across the streets , communities and rural areas without recourse to anti grazing law. People cannot access their farmlands because of the threat posed on farmers by these herders. Majority of the Herders are forcing themselves on some states and regions to settle down and enforce dominance because the chase by the Amotekun from the South West region pushed them to the South South and South East region.
The Fulani Herders are warlike and always troublesome and heartless. Rearing of cow is purely a private business, a part of livestock farming like fishery and poultry farming. The roaming about of Fulani herders with cattle in Nigeria should be stopped by all legal means possible.
Nowadays the people can easily hear kidnapping and abduction cases here and there and the influx and spillage of herders are likened to be responsible for insecurity across rural forests, farmlands and communities.
There are numerous accounts of collateral havoc on Communities in the South where farmers protest the destruction of crops in their farmlands and incidents of abduction. This News should be taken as an urgent call or an 🆘 report.
-Princely Onyenwe reporting
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