Herdsmen Return: At Ganduje dinner, Igbo businessmen warn Ohaneze, IPOB, others

The Igbo community in Kano have warned against asking Fulani herdsmen living in the south to return to the north.

The calls have been coming since the murder of the Afenifere leader Reuben Fasoranti’s daughter weeks ago, by bandits suspected to be Fulani herdsmen..

Making such calls, the National Daily gathered,  are ethnic militia groups like the outlawed  IPOB, Biafra  Youth Coalition of Nigeria, the Coalition of Northern Groups, and pan-cultural organisations like the Ohaneze, the Afenifere, and the Northern Elders Forum.

But the Igbo community in Kano said the calls are divisive, anarchical and too dangerous.

They insisted that Nigerians should stay and enjoy their lives anywhere they so desire.

According to  the Eze Ndigbo Kano and President-General/Igbo Traditional Leader in the Diaspora, Igwe Boniface Ibekwe ,  if the Fulani are forced to come back, what will happen to the southerners in the north?

“…Our people will tell us to go back to the south. Is that what our forefathers wished to see us doing?” Ibekwe asked during a special dinner Kano Gov Abdullahi Ganduje held in his honour on Saturday night.

“We are therefore rejecting such call coming from some quarters. It does not mean well for the corporate existence of our dear country.”

Kano has a large population of southeasterners living and doing business in the state.

Ganduje, too, rejected the call.

“Those who are calling on the Fulani to leave South, we don’t share the same feeling with them. People have a choice, as far as Nigeria’s constitution is concerned, they can  live wherever they chose to. But they must respect laws and cultures of those they are living with,” the governor said.

He, however, argued that the issue of Fulani roaming about from one place to another should be stopped.

“We must find a way of turning the table from being social and cultural engagement to becoming social and economic. Herders should drop the cultural attachment to their rearing activities and make their rearing economically beneficial.”