The Country Is Crumbling – Ex-Governor Isa Yuguda Says

BY ADEYEMI AKANJI, BAUCHI – Former governor of Bauchi State, Malam Isa Yuguda has said that the time has come for Nigerian to stop wiping sentiments as the country is fast crumbling.

This is as he said that the Fulani particularly the pastoralist, has been marginalized and brutalized for too long and therefore has the constitutional rights to defend himself against any form of aggression.

Yuguda, who stated this while speaking with Journalists shortly after he revalidated his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said that the issue of the Fulani is a very delicate one that must be handled with utmost care and diligence.

According to Yuguda; “This is a very sensitive national issue and given that I am a Fulani man, if I make comment, people will say I am siding the Fulani. The herders have been around all over the country in the past 200 years. You cannot just wake up one morning and all of sudden become an AK47 holder.

“Most importantly, the cattle rearers are giving Nigeria a minimum of one million cattle every day which are taken as beef but their treatment by the government is bad. At the time Lord Luggard was administering Nigeria, the cattle breeders were the main source of revenue for the country which was used to start developing the infrastructure including Benue where they have been chased out now”.

Yuguda said that the Fulani is pastoralist moving from one point to another looking for pasture for his herds which is also an agricultural venture called animal husbandry through which there have been trillion of investment in agriculture and subsidies but there has never been subsidy in pastoralism.

He said that there were grazing reserves all over but today, the reserves are no longer there, asking, where are the cattle routes?

Yuguda said that there is no way anyone can’t govern the country without a segment of the country, stressing that in the 1960s, Nigeria was just a few millions but today it is over 120 million people.

He therefore challenged government at all levels to think about how to resettle the Fulani in order to stop the frequency of the deadly clashes between them and farmers across the country.

According to him; “Cattle breeding is a huge economy which if well harnessed will boost beef industry and other drivable because there is nothing that is a waste in the cow, everything in the cow is money”.

He lamented that the Fulani is being seen as a gun carrying person, stressing that such a perception is wrong impression.