The Fulani herdsmen under the aegis of the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, have vowed to retaliate the recent attacks and killings of Fulani herdsmen and their cows in the South-West States.
The National Secretary of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Alhassan Saleh, stated this in an interview on Sunday.
He said that the eviction of herdsmen from the Southern region of the country, is a dangerous precedent, and that the best way to solve the herders-farmers crisis is for State Governments to provide ranches and grazing routes for the herders and their animals.
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His words: “Nobody has the right (to evict herdsmen). If you say you are going to evict us, we will resist eviction. We have been surviving in harsh environments; if we do not resist, we will be wiped out of the planet. If you kill a herder, do not go and sleep, we will revisit you, and it is not because we hate your tribe. People attack herders, and in one way or the other, herders have found a way to retaliate.”
Also, Saleh stated that nobody could bar foreign herdsmen from entering Nigeria, saying that most of the herders entering the country once settled in Nigeria, but relocated to other neighbouring countries like Ghana and Benin Republic.
He added: “All those who travelled to the Benin Republic and others are coming back home. All those saying they will bar foreign herders from entering Nigeria are just playing to the gallery because if they know the ECOWAS Protocols, they would know they cannot chase them away. That is why the position of the Bauchi State Governor [Bala Mohammed] is the true position. You have no right to evict anybody from any part of the country.
“Our number has increased recently because of the tension in Ghana and Benin republics. The Benin Republic ones have integrated with the Yoruba in such a way that they speak the language. They were initially living in the South-West, and they are coming back.”
Speaking further, he described the eviction notice to herders as a propaganda, adding that, “innocent” herders are becoming the casualties.
He stated: “They expected a reaction from us, maybe by way of attacking other ethnic nationalities. But that is wrong because the herders they are attacking are the innocent herders. Are the criminals representing anybody? They are doing their criminal enterprise. Our pain is that the people who are supposed to know are pretending as if they do not know.”
Saleh also asked the State Governors to provide land for ranching for the herders, as a solution to the ongoing crisis, adding that, herders’ eviction would only lead to wider consequences.
