Opinion
Social Media is saturated with religious sentiments into the issue of the Fulani herdsmen invasion of farmlands.
What Boko Haram did was a child’s play to the horror the Fulani herdsmen had done to us in Nigeria. While Boko Haram insurgency is confined to the North East, Fulani herdsmen havoc cuts across the states of the federation.
I want to plead that we should and must not narrow it to religion or politics. If we involve religion, it means we have failed from onset.
Those people that were massacred recently in Benue and Taraba are not all Christians neither are they all Muslims.
One thing I want everyone to note is that we should not allow Herdsmen Colony Policy in our land. It is a conquest strategy.
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Anyone that has a business should know how to set up his business without infringing on the rights of others.
It is not possible for anyone in the southwest or southeast to go up north and say he wants to take over their land.
Let us fight in unison against this gross injustice.
The Benue State massacre of innocent people which includes children and women finally brought to limelight the injustices being meted out to farmers across the states of the federation by the Fulani herdsmen many years ago.
The question is, is it the right of the herdsmen to go to another man’s farm to eat their hard earned crops and destroy their farms? The answer is, No!
The incident of Benue and Taraba States made the Federal Government to come out with a planned policy tagged; Cattle Colony Policy in all states of the federation for the cattle pastoralists to feed their cows.
How laudable this policy might be, those who conceived it only thought about short term solution to solve the present lingering problems but forgot the long term implications on future generations.
If the herdsmen who have not been given a colony could butcher their hosts with impunity without mercy what will now happen if a portion of land is given to them in every state?
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It is an insult on our collective psyche for the Federal Government to tell us that it will use our tax payers’ money to fund the Cattle Colony for herdsmen to settle down on their personal business.
The Yorubas should not forget so quickly the history of the former Aare Ona Kakanfo, Afonja, how he was assassinated by the Fulanis and made Ilorin which was predominantly part of Yorubaland taken over by force of arms by the Hausa/Fulanis.
Allowing Cattle Colony in this part will amount to injustice on our children who will come after this present generation. They will not stop to heap curses on us in the grave for taking irrational decision on their behalf.
For this not to happen, all the Southwest leaders and governors should put sentiments, politics and religion behind them and reject the Cattle Colony Policy with all its temporary relief.
I am one of number one critics of Governor Ayodele Fayose because of his irrational actions most of the times.
But every right thinking Yorubaman would agree with him that he has done what a leader ought to do to protect his people now and the future generations on Anti-Grazing Bill passed into law in Ekiti State.
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History will never forgive any leader who will sell his own people out for political or selfish gains.
We are all stakeholders in the affairs of Nigeria, in as much as we cannot go to other people’s land to forcefully occupy it, no one should have the right to occupy ours in any guise.
The Yorubas and other ethnic groups who thinks they owe their future generations obligation to protect them should reject the Cattle Colony Policy and the supposed bill (National Grazing Reserve Council) allegedly submitted by the Federal Government to the National Assembly to pass it into law.
The Yorubas should put their religion and political differences aside and speak with one voice to reject this Cattle Colony Policy, not for today, but for the sake of generations coming after us.
www.sojworld.com © January 16, 2018.
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