The umbrella body for the natives of the southern part of Kaduna state, the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union, SOKAPU, yesterday warned that its current generation and the next will resist the creation of Cattle Grazing Reserves on its land, stressing that no inch of its land will be given out for such.
The National President of SOKAPU, Barr. Solomon Musa said in a statement that the creation of grazing reserves in Southern Kaduna amounts to rewarding herdsmen with the lands of the over 4, 000 natives of the enclave believed to have been killed by herdsmen since 2011.
Part of the statement reads: “On behalf of all the 65 ethnic groups of Southern Kaduna, both at home and the Diaspora, we wish to state our opposition to the creation of Grazing Reserves within the Southern Kaduna geographical area for several disturbing reasons.
“We are also alarmed by the hasty manner the Kaduna State Government donated 5000 hectares of land to the proposed Federal Government Grazing Reserves. This is in addition to the suspicious reactivation of about 17 Grazing Reserves, including moribund ones in the state.
“We ordinarily would have wholeheartedly been in support of any scheme capable of halting the unwarranted attacks on our people by suspected herdsmen and their accomplices, but the idea of bringing in the suspected aggressor to sit right in the midst of his victims would be viewed as an official encouragement for continued assault on our people.
“Since the Kaduna State Government has been harping on peace, unity and development of Southern Kaduna, which we really appreciate, it should be sensitive and sympathetic with the humongous disasters that herdsmen have wrought on our communities since 2011. Between 2011 and 2015, over a period of just 4 years, 54 documented attacks have been launched with over 4,000 people killed.
“Without prejudice to the power conferred on a state government to take custody of lands on behalf of the people, but there is really no inch of land in Southern Kaduna that is a no-man’s-land. Every community in Southern Kaduna has stock of its grassland, farms, valleys, forests, rivers, swamps and hills. We have strong emotional attachments to them, because they are all we have left for us by our ancestors who sacrificed so much to preserve them and pass them on to us. Any attempt to unfairly wrest them out of our hands shall be resisted by our generation and generations to come.
“The government has shown its willingness to adopt the identity of all inhabitants of the state on the basis of fairness and equality, but we find it curious why it would deliberately want to annex land and all its resources for the private profits of a private business venture. Pray! where is the required fairness?
“We expected the government to have carried out wide consultations and sample opinions of the people of Southern Kaduna. But from our Senator, members of the House of Representatives, Assembly members, SOKAPU, our royal fathers, down to tribal unions, none was consulted on the issue of Grazing Reserves. Our people survive on tilling our lands, and the herdsmen on their herds. How will it feel to take herds and give to farmers, if the farmers were the ones maiming the herdsmen?” the statement asked.
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