By Dotun Akinwole
It was highly impressive to listen to Governor Ganduje of Kano state with Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television on Politics Today the other week. In his answers to a myriad of questions posed by Seun, the governor displayed a wealth of wisdom as well as a clear understanding of the solution to the incessant bloody clashes with fatal consequences, between Fulani herders and farmers. He went further to tell the whole world on the live broadcast that he is a Fulani, and that he used to herd cattle when he was a little boy, but his lot changed when he swapped nomadic pastoralism for the acquisition of education up to university level.
Today he is the governor of Kano state. And he candidly admitted and equally stated that he would never have been a governor if he had been “abandoned” to herding. The governor then reiterated that he would commit his administration to produce and replicate many more Fulani of similar background to his to become like himself in different areas of human endeavour; and to achieve this laudable objective, he made a clarion call for the establishment of modern ranches in the northern parts of Nigeria, where there is enormous availability of land. In addition to this, northern parts of the country are the most environmentally conducive areas for animal husbandry.
At the ranches, said the governor, the herders would have access to health care and clean portable water from borehole, banking facilities as well as social interaction with other people; and the cattle would be given nutritious feeds as well as adequate vetenary care, which would also include artificial insemination so that the cows can produce copious amount of milk and succulent flesh. He mentioned the fact that he had already sent some herders’ children to Turkey for training in ranching.
The herders’ children would also be able to acquire education (like he did), thus ensuring a better quality of life for the cattle Fulani. Devoid of bias, sentiments, and emotive verbal palliatives of negativism, Ganduje’s argument was very logical, sensible, scientific and as a matter of fact altruistic. The governor identified a problem and proffered a brilliant solution. It is the likes of fair-minded progressives of this calibre across the political spectrum that should the assigned to find a genuine and permanent solution to the criminal herders’ menace in our nation today. The governor announced that he had even commenced building schools for the Almajirins in Kano state.
Conversely there is need to expose the presidential lickspittles in their variegated forms as well as some northern state governors as the cruellest enemies of the cattle Fulani, who have remained as the pariahs of pernicious feudalism. The likes of Shehu Garba and Governor Bala Mohamed, advocating the perpetuation of the unsustainable and archaic pastoral system of herding of two hundred years ago in 2021, are doing a disservice to their cattle Fulani kinsmen.
One would expect these political office holders to be ashamed of; and to dissociate themselves from criminal elements committing all kinds of abominable atrocity throughout the length and breadth of Nigeria. Regardless of their ethnicity, criminals are criminals. Period! It is only in a country where there is no rule of Law that herders would be going about with ostensibly displayed AK47 weapons in twenty first century. One even attended a meeting with a governor in the North adorned in AK47, the unmistakeable paraphernalia of his lucrative trade-banditry/abduction/terror. Totally absurd!
It is constitutionally unlawful for Nigerians to carry ordinary firearms without a licence, but not so for the criminal herders who unleash bloody mayhem on innocent farmers on their farms, rape and maim old women and girls in their villages, raze down innumerable rural communities, ravage farmlands, brutally murder children et al.
Tragically, many of these heinous acts of horrific violence are unreported according to the senator in Niger state from whose constituency twenty-seven students have been abducted today (17/02/2021). It is unimaginably inconsiderate and callous for the likes of Bala Mohamed and shehu Garba, whose well educated family members are cocooned in extravagant opulence- courtesy of the stupendous largesse of their offices, to suggest that murderous marauders masquerading as cattle herders have the right to roam freely on other people’s farms, grounds and premises, notwithstanding trekking thousands of miles with their children and cattle in full exposure to the blast of all the elements and hazards of nature.
This is the obvious reason why the cattle are sickly emaciated, scrawny, skeletal, diseased and rinderpest infested by the time they reach the South. Rinderpest in cattle is caused by paramyxovirus due to malnutrition and lack of vetenary care. The truth be told that the beef from the cattle reared in Nigeria does not meet the required standards of hygiene for the manufacture of pets’ (cats and dogs) food in Europe and America.
As a matter of fact, Nestlé Pruna, the transnational corporation that specialises in the making of pets’ food will never touch the beef of Nigeria cattle with a bargepole let alone use it to manufacture food for pets. One would expect the privileged to be humane and show the kind of empathy of Governor Ganduje of Kano. Worse still the presidency has been literally driving well-meaning Nigerians mad by turning itself into a sphinx as a ruse to cover up its gross ineptitude, abysmal incompetence, and nefarious nepotism. The very worst of its kind in the history of Nigeria.
However, the presidency sporadically wakes up from its stupor to engage its hyper-remunerated lickspittles to distort facts and present hollow arguments to Nigerians to defend nomadic type of animal husbandry, which is no longer fit for purpose currently. Rather than embrace the lofty ideals of governor Ganduje; and rub minds with the likes of him across the nation to find solutions to the many hydra-headed socio-economic problems bedevilling the nation, but the presidency and its cabinet are pre-occupied with dandling criminality on their knees. How pathetic?
This is the tragedy of a country that God has blessed with superabundant human and material resources. Many ordinary Nigerians have been achieving success with giant strides in foreign lands, but the ones in Nigeria are being subjected to all manners of tyranny and psychological trauma.
Mr Akinwole sent this article from the United Kingdom
