By Ayo Kehinde
President Muhammadu Buhari has called on all Nigerians to ignore calls by the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, to Fulani herders to leave the southern part of the country and relocate, home in the North.
The NEF, had issued the call following heightened tension in the most parts of the Southsouth, the Middle Belt and the Southwest geo-political zones following the growing mistrust and likelihood of hostility against the herders, in the face of a series of unresolved herder/farmer crisis and the recent controversial Ruga policy of the Federal Government, seen as a deliberate land grab ploy to flaunts legal and constitutional procedures to create settlements for the herdsmen in the lands all over the country. The federal government has since suspended the policy following massive opposition and criticism by generality of Nigerians.
Reacting to the NEF call, Buhari said on Wednesday that “All citizens of Nigeria are free to move and live within any part of the country as they please, whether or not they are originally from there.
“In line with our country’s Constitution, the government of Nigeria and the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari will protect citizens of Nigeria wherever they find themselves. No one has the right to anyone of group to depart from and part of the country, whether north, south, east or west”, Buhari said in a statement issued by his Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity.
Shehu questioned the intentions of the NEF and other”so called leaders in delving into issues with unsolicited, ill-intentioned advice”.
“The polarising role of the Northern Elders Forum and all those other groups dabbling into issues of security to score cheap political points has long been a sore point in Nigeria’s body polity. They should not be allowed to mislead anyone, least of all the Fulani headers.”
He said the Buhari administration is fully fully devoted to finding a lasting solution to the herder/ farmer clashes in different parts of the Nigeria- one that would be acceptable to all the parties involved.
