The Coalition of Northern Groups, in a statement on Sunday, said the Southern governors unfairly profiled the entire business community of herders as the sole cause of the bulk of the security challenges in the region in their resolution in Asaba, Delta State.
It accused the governors of
deliberately leaving out the Indigenous People of Biafra and the Eastern
Security Network among others in identifying causes of security challenges in
their domains.
The CNG’s position was contained
in a statement by its spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, titled ‘Response to the
Asaba Declaration by Southern Nigerian governors.’
It added that the southern
governors neglected to acknowledge that just as development and population
growth had put pressure on available land and increased the prospects of
conflict between migrating herders and local populations, so also had the mass
movement of millions of people from the South into the vast interior of the
North and the permanent nature of this movement.
It also accused the southern
governors of failing to attribute the current national woes to the regime of
the All Progressives Congress led by the President, Major General Muhammadu
Buhari (retd.).
The statement read, “Against the
backdrop of these observations, on grazing ban, the CNG emphatically repudiates
the vilification and targeting of the entire pastoral community for
vilification, systematic dehumanisation, profiling, alienation or any action
that will render them objects of attack and persecution.
“The CNG categorically calls on
all pastoralists and by extension, all northerners living as minorities in the
South, whose lives and livelihoods stand threatened by this regime of hostile
and damaging policies to be ratified by the southern governors, to immediately
relocate with their livestock assets to the North.
“We demand absolute guarantee of
protecting the lives and property of the pastoral communities as they relocate
to the North, by ensuring their movement is not impeded by any legislation or
obstacle imposed by a state or a community in the South.
“We demand the federal and
northern states governments to immediately identify suitable lands across the
region and create grazing reserves and cattle routes through resort to extant
provisions of the Land Use Act and other related laws.”
0 Comments