Plateau’s Governor Simon Lalong has joined the faction of President Muhammadu Buhari’s loyalists that reject the cattle colony scheme proposed by the federal government to solve the herder-farmer crisis raging across Nigeria.
Lalong on Friday also said it is “false, malicious and highly mischievous”, reports in the social media that he had carved out parts of Riyom, Barkin Ladi and Bokkos Local Government Areas for the creation of cattle colonies.
A Government House statement by his Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, Dan Manjang, advised all Plateau citiizens to “discountenance such mischievous information” and gravitate towards issues of unity, rather than those that divide them.
“The Governor herein after state unequivocally that this thinking is not only the figment of the imagination of its authors, who want to make political capital out of it, but false, malicious and highly mischievous,” the statement read in part.
“Governor Simon Bako Lalong has and does not contemplate such action and he further call on all good citizens of Plateau to bury such imagination of these elements bent on throwing the State into confusion. Cattle colonies are not in the imagination of Governor Lalong.
“Consequently, the Governor urge all peace loving citizens of Plateau State to discountenance such mischievous information but to gravitate towards issues that unite us rather than those that divide us.”
Imo Gov. Rochas Okorocha was the first among the Buharists to kick against the proposal.
But Kogi and no fewer than 16 states up north have adopted the idea, and are ready to cede part of their land to the federal government for the project.