By Beatrice Gondyi Bauchi
Former governor of Bauchi State, Isa Yuguda has said that Fulani Herdsmen have the constitutional right to defend themselves, but without arms.
Yuguda stated this on Monday while interacting with journalists shortly after his revalidation of the ongoing APC registration in Bauchi State.
Yuguda said, at the time when Lord Lugard setup the government in Northern Nigeria, the Fulanis provided revenue that kick-started development in the north in terms of infrastructure, including in Benue state where they were chased out.
The pastoral Fulani inferno
“This is a very sensitive national issue and given that I am a Fulani man, when I make comments, people will think I am siding the Fulani no, but I think the cattle rearers who have been herding for the past 200 years all over the country cannot just wakeup in the morning and all of a sudden become AK 47 killers and mostly importantly, the neglect of the Fulani, especially the cattle rearers who are presently giving Nigerians a minimum of one million cattle to slaughter and take as beef, their treatment by the Nigerian states have been most unfair”
” 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 and today where are the grazing reserves? where are the cattle routes? But you cannot blame Nigerians because we are giving birth, because in the 60’s, we were still 60 million in population, but today, we are about 130 million Nigerians in the northern part of the country, so everywhere have been dominated”
“Where were those in power with their brains that they never thought of resettling these people and make them an economy. The mindset especially down south is that the Fulani are gun carrying people, there have been clamour by senior citizens of this country that we should carry weapons, but Governor Mohammed made a remark to that effect, everybody was sentimental”
“When a senior elder statement said we should carry guns, where were you guys, nobody wrote about it, until Governor Mohammed spoke about it. These people deserves the right to defend themselves, let us stop being sentimental for God sake” he said
