Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, says AK-47-bearing herdsmen are forced to do so because the government has failed to secure their lives and livelihood following the accusation of kidnapping linked to them in the west for the past weeks.
Decades-long conflict over access and control of land between the nomadic cattle herders and local farming communities has led to thousands of lives lost, and millions worth of property damage.
Herdsmen have borne the brunt of the blame for the attacks especially because they roam into numerous communities, illegally bearing arms, with herds of cattle that cause devastation to farmlands.
Speaking in Bauchi on Thursday, February 11, 2021, Mohammed said herdsmen need the AK-47 rifles to defend themselves from cattle rustlers and other challenges encountered on the road.
“It is not his fault, it is the fault of the government and the people,”
he said.
The conflict has bred ethnic tension across the country with herders, usually of the Fulani tribe, a constant target for eviction from local communities.
Mohammed condemned the treatment of Fulani herdsmen especially in the southern region, noting that the whole tribe should not be criminalised for the actions of some of them responsible for deadly attacks.
He especially picked on Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom, for starting a wave of anti-Fulani sentiment.
The governor said his own state has been accommodating to all tribes from across the country, unlike the treatment Fulani people are facing in other parts.
“You should be very sensitive,”
he said.
Mohammed’s comment was made a day after the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) reached a consensus to end open grazing in the country, a major source of the conflict.
State governments were encouraged to put in place systems to accelerate the grazing initiative of the National Livestock Transformation Plan and ranching in the country.
