By Admin
A strong support for Fulani herdsmen to continue carrying assault weapons like AK-47 has been provided by Bauchi state governor, Bala Muhammed.
Governor Muhammed said in a keynote address at the closing ceremony of the 2021 Press Week of the Correspondent’s Chapel, Nigeria Union of Journalists, Bauchi state.
The governor said the herdsmen need the weapons to fight off cattle rustlers as the government has failed to protect them.
He also berated Southern governors for taking the wrong approach in the farmers-herdsmen crisis. He condemned the quit notice given by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu to herders in the state’s forest reserves.
Muhammed said every nigerian has the constitutional rights to live in any part of the country they so wished.
He lambasted Benue Governor, Samuel Ortom, who had accused President Muhammadu Buhari of partiality and called on the federal government to give citizens gun licences.
“The person that is most wrong is the Governor of Benue State. He started all this. If you don’t accommodate other tribes, we are also accommodating your people in Bauchi and other places,” Muhammed insists.
“We have so many Tiv people working and farming in Alkaleri, farming in Tafawa Balewa, farming in Bogoro local government areas of Bauchi. Has anyone asked them to go? We have not because it is their constitutional right to be there.
The governor said Fulani people are exposed to many dangers by animals and rustlers and have no other option than to defend themselves because the “society and the government are not protecting him.”
He exonorated the herdsmen from criminal activities saying that while there are criminals in every tribe , the Fulani should not be criminalised.
