Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje alongside Igbo leaders in Kano,
has rejected calls by some Northern political leaders that Fulani
herdsmen in the Southern part of the country relocate to the North.
The leaders said at a dinner in Kano that the call was “divisive and
retrogressive.’’
According to a statement issued by Ganduje’s Chief Press Secretary,
Malam Abba Anwar on Sunday in Kano, the governor and Eze Ndi Igbo Kano,
Igwe Boniface Igbokwe reacted at a dinner organised by the governor in
honour of Igbokwe on his 10th Offalla anniversary.
“Those who are calling on the Fulani to leave South, we don’t share the
same feeling with them.
“People have a choice as far as the Nigerian constitution is concerned,
to live wherever they chose to.
“But they must respect laws and cultures of those they are living
with,’’ Ganduje said.
Ganduje said that Nigeria is a heterogeneous society with different
religions and nationalities, adding that this calls for mutual respect
among the different people.
“As we are all creatures of Allah, it is duty-bound on all of us to
always respect Allah’s creatures. No two way about it,” he added.
He insisted that the issue of Fulani moving from one place to another
should be stopped.
“Herders should drop the cultural attachment to their rearing activities
and make their rearing become economically beneficial.
“It is with this singular reason that I called on the Federal Government
to put a halt to the ever-increasing movement of herders from one state
to another.
“It is because we want to bring out economic benefit out of the whole
exercise that we inaugurated a RUGA Settlement Committee in Kano.
“This is fundamentally to run away from the insecurity posed by the
herders/farmers clashes everywhere,” he explained.
The governor said that the major problem of herders was education
because they were not settled in one place for them to get educated.