You can’t make policy on open grazing, Akeredolu replies Presidency

Ondo State governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, yesterday picked holes in the presidency’s position on the ban on open grazing by governors of the southern extraction.

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Specifically, Akeredolu who is chairman of the Southern Governors’ forum noted that the senior special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on media and publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, lacks the authority to make policy statements for the federal government unless directed.

The presidential spokesperson had on Monday stated that it is very obvious that the governors had no solution to offer from their resolutions to the herder-farmer clashes that have lingered in the country for generations.

Shehu said it was “equally true that their (Southern governors’) announcement is of questionable legality, given the Constitutional right of all Nigerians to enjoy the same rights and freedoms within every one of our 36 states (and FCT) -regardless of the state of their birth or residence.”

But apparently miffed by the presidency’s assertion, Akeredolu warned Shehu and “his cohorts” to desist from hurling insults at elected representatives of the people, noting vehemently that the presidential aide must unveil the actual intentions of those he serves, who he said are definitely not the president.

Reacting to the statement, Governor Akeredolu who spoke through his senior special assistant on Special Duties, Doyin Odebowale, said, “Anyone who has been following the utterances of this man, as well as his fellow travelers on the self-deluding, mendacious but potentially dangerous itinerary to anarchy, cannot but conclude that he works, assiduously, for extraneous interests.

“Their game plan stands at variance with the expectations of genuine lovers of peaceful coexistence among all the peoples whose ethnic extractions are indigenous to Nigeria.

“The declaration that the recommendations of the Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, a mere political appointee like Garba Shehu, are now the “lasting solutions” which eluded all the elected representatives of the people of the Southern part of the country, exposes this man as a pitiable messenger who does not seem to understand the limits of his relevance and charge.”

Casting doubt on the relationship between shehu’s comments and the president’s true position, the governor said, “Mr. Garba Shehu just released a press statement purporting to represent the position of President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, on the farmer-herder “clashes” and what he termed as “Deep Rooted Solutions to the herdsmen attacks.

“He also attributed a unilateral decision to the President who “clears the way for ranching and revival of forest reserves” as part of the “permanent solution to the frequent clashes between them, as well as the associated problem of the gun-wielding “killer-herdsmen”.

Akeredolu further noted that while Shehu wants to “revive forest reserves,” he “seems particularly uninterested in the current position of the same law that he and his cohorts often misinterpret to serve parochialism and greed.”

He continued: “Governors no longer have powers over the lands in their territories. They must take instructions from appointees of the Federal Government on such matters.

“It is superfluous, and that is being charitable, for anyone to remind us of the constitutional right of bona fide citizens “to enjoy rights and freedoms within every one of our 36 States (and FCT)-regardless of their state of birth and residence.

“There has never been any contention on this provision. Mr. Garba seems to have issues understanding the difference between licentious criminality and qualified rights under our law. We must continually nudge him off his current state of cognitive dissonance. His pronouncement betrays dubiety and mischief.

“Most traditional families in Nigeria have occupations. Pastoralism is not an exception. Any ethnic group still trapped in anachronism may be assisted to embrace modernity.

“Dispossessing communities of their ancestral lands, encouraging denizens of the forests to overrun lands belonging to other people and forcing alien bands of migrants on the local populace to live “side-by-side” with other communities cannot be for animal husbandry. It raises suspicion on a grand, deliberate, persistent, and insidious design to use naked force to subjugate the real owners of the land. Mr. Garba Shehu is a major supporter of the current pervasive anarchy in the land.

“His acts are those of an agent provocateur. Other closet dreamers, aspirers to colonial fantasies, must be weaned off their delusion.

“No inch of the space delineated and known, currently, as South West, and indeed the whole South will be ceded to a band of invaders masquerading as herdsmen under any guise.”

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