Sowore holds meeting with Fulani herdsmen, farmers

By SUNDAY ODIBASHI

A presidential aspirant in the preparations to the 2019 elections, Steven Omoyele Sowore, in continuation of his nationwide consultations with groups, nationalities, and stakeholders across Nigeria, had dialogue with Fulani herdsmen and farmers in Adamawa State.

The Presidential aspirant, who is also the Convener of Take It Back Movement, was in the State to create awareness about his ambition to become Nigeria’s President in 2019 and to seek the votes of Nigerians in the North in the February 15, 2019 presidential election.

The back-to-back countrywide political campaign awareness tour saw the presidential aspirant hold two Town Hall Meetings in Yola, Adamawa State, and Jalingo, the Taraba States in the three days he toured the States and also visited respected Nigerians, including traditional rulers of the Emirate Council in the North East.

Accompanied by senior members of Take It Back Movement Nigeria, Sowore decried incessant fighting between herdsmen and farmers across the country, regretting that the ugly debacle has exacerbated to a point where even Nigerians who do not belong to both groups has been caught in the crossfire, including thousands that have been maimed and killed in the last few years.

The publisher of SaharaReporters counseled the herdsmen and Farmers to eschew violence, reminding them that they had lived harmoniously over decades in the same area without any skirmishes, advising them further to identify the bad eggs amongst themselves and sanction them accordingly.

Umaru, who invited the presidential aspirant with his team to inspect their herd of cattle numbering several hundred along the ever busy Yola –Jalingo Highway in Maya Belewa, Yola North Local Government Area, remarked that there was no problem between them and the farmers, saying that what he and other herdsmen need, is to live in peace with their neighbors, take care of their cows and family, as well as embark on business of trading their cows without any molestation.

 “As you can see, we live in peace here and I go about my daily business. Nobody disturbs or attacks us, however, life has not been easy for me and other herdsmen,” he said in impeccable Hausa dialect.

The herdsmen leader in the zone further stated that they were exhausted grazing their herd of cows running into several thousand daily across length and breadth of the area, lamenting that it is taking a toll on their health, cows, and family.

 “We are ready to stay in one place as long as all the things that will make us comfortable are provided by the government. We are not troublesome people. We are just trying to survive with our cows. This is as our life and there is nothing we can do about it,” he said.

While noting that the best thing that will happen to herdsmen would be to have a ranch where all necessary facilities like animal clinics, residential houses, pipe borne water, police stations, nomadic schools, etc, are provided, the herdsmen from Taraba State urged the government to quickly address their problems if lasting peace is to be realized, even as he denied that they are the ones destroying farmlands in the state.

Refuting the herdsmen claim, the leader of the farmers, Mallam Musa, said that the herdsmen invade their farms intermittently and in the process damage their crops. Though, he detailed that the herdsmen do this when they are not around the farms but when they had retired from the farm after the day’s work.

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He appealed to the government to find a suitable place for the herdsmen to keep their cows even as he emphasized that they need assistance from the government to support them in their farming.

 “I don’t need much to embark on the kind of farming that we are used to here. All we want is protection, a school for our children, hospitals, and fertilizer to farmers. If we get N50,000 here individually, we will produce a lot for this country,” he appealed.

The meeting between the herdsmen and farmers with the presidential aspirant climaxed into a successful Town Hall Meeting in Yola, Adamawa State and Jalingo, capital of Taraba State where the crowd, in their thousands, could not contain the joy of meeting with human and civil rights activist that was at the forefront of actualization of June 12, 1993 polls won by Bashorun Abiola but annulled by the Ibrahim Babaginda-led military junta.