By ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi-
A former Governor of Bauchi State, Mallam Isa Yuguda, has lamented that Fulani people are not being treated fairly by Nigeria.
He stressed that the herders crisis across the country can only be addressed when they are given justice.
Mallam Yuguda who stated this while speaking with journalists in an interview shortly after his revalidation as a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Monday at the Destination Bauchi Hotel, accused past governments in the country of creating banditry by their refusal to address the plight of herders whose cattle routes have been taken.
“It is not their making that they are what they are today. How did you create banditry from a people that have never known banditry, they have never been known to be bandits but stick-carrying people”.
“In fact, the fertile ground for breeding them (bandits) was bred by the Nigerian government over the years, I am not saying this government, but over the years. Where are the grazing reserves? Where are the cattle routes?
“In the 1960s, we were 60 million in population, today, we are about 130 million people in the northern part of the country. Everywhere has been dominated. Where were those in power with their brains, where did their brains go that they never thought of how to resettle these people and make them an economy, because it is a huge economy”.
“If they had settled them down, we would have had a diary industry, beef industry and you’ll have other direvatives from the animal itself, because there is nothing that is wasted from the cow, everything in the cow is money,” he said.
He added that: “So, let them redress their shortcomings and mistakes because these people will still be around. Are they going to climb the air and start grazing their cattle there, it is not possible.”
Yuguda, a former Minister of Aviation and two term governor of Bauchi state from 2007-2015, said that despite the contributions of the Fulani to the economy, they are still being treated unfairly.
According to him, if the government could release huge sums of money as subsidies in agriculture, why can’t the government subsidize pastoralism?
“Most importantly, the neglect of the fulanis especially the cattle rearers who are presently, giving Nigeria a minimum of one million cattles everyday to slaughter and take as beef, their treatment by the Nigerian people have been most unfair.
“Most unfair in the sense that, at the time when Lord Luggard finished conquering northern Nigeria, they were the only source of revenue. They provided the revenue that jumpstarted development in terms of monopolizing infrastructure in the north including Benue state where they have been chased out now.
“They are pastoralists, they are people who provide beef for the country and you can see them as agricultural venture or animal husbandry. There have been billions and trillions of investments in agriculture, in forms of subsidies for fertilizer and so on, have you ever heard the federal government subsidizing pastoralism?” he said.
He added that: “What I am saying in essence is that the Nigerian state has not been fair to these people. When the white man came, he respected them because they were his source of revenue, not only that he provided cattle routes from Maiduguri to Otukpo, from Sokoto to Lokoja and Ilorin and these infrastructures were provided by the white people”.
“So, let us stop being sentimental, for goodness sake, otherwise, this country will crumble and it is crumbling in your hands, and I am afraid, you the press are the people creating these problems. You have to save this country for yourselves, you are the young ones or else, you’ll inherit no country.”
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