As the seven-day ultimatum Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, issued herdsmen occupying Ondo state forests expires on Sunday January 24, the National President of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Bello Abdullahi Bodejo has declared that nobody has the power to remove Fulani herdsmen from the state’s forests.
In an interview with The Sun, Bodejo said the Fulanis have settled in the Ondo Forest reserves for over 250 years and will not obey anybody to leave the place. He said; “The Ondo State governor, Rotimi Akeredolu doesn’t have any right to give such ultimatum to our people. People, including Fulani voted for him to be the governor; so he should be the governor of everybody in the state. Fulani have been in the forests he is talking about even before he was born; they have been there for over 250 years.
No matter how dangerous a forest maybe, Fulani would go and settle there. After staying there for a long time and their cow dung turns the place fertile, people would begin to come there to farm and to settle and from then, they begin to make claims that our cattle were destroying their farms.” “We are suing the governor and seeking injunction restraining him and others from carrying out his threat. But even at that, nobody, no power can send the herdsmen out of Ondo State.” If you apply force and out of a hundred Fulani, you kill 95 of them. The remaining five will go back there and continue with their grazing.
They have been there for up to 250 years. They have been there before the state was even created. “All the lands in this country belong to the Fulani, but we don’t have any business to do with land if it doesn’t have areas for grazing; if the land doesn’t have cow food, we won’t have any business with it. We don’t sell land, we don’t farm. What we consider is the areas that have cow food.
If the place is good for grazing, we don’t need anybody’s permission to go there.” ‘Nigerians should know that our association, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore is not backing anybody who is a kidnapper, armed robber, and we are calling for law enforcement agents to go after all these criminals and deal decisively with them.”
