Southern Kaduna union vows to resist grazing reserves for herdsmen

Ethnic nationalities in the Southern part of Kaduna state, under the umbrella of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), say they will resist any attempt by the state government to allocate part of their ancestral land to Fulani herdsmen in the name of grazing reserves.

In a statement issued on Saturday on behalf of the 65 ethnic nationalities in southern Kaduna, SOKAPU declared that any attempt to unfairly wrest land out of their hands would be “resisted by our generation and generations to come”.

SOKAPU took the stance following the decision of the Kaduna state government to reactivate the 17 grazing reserves spread across the state in addition to the donation of 5000 hectares of land to the federal government for the same purpose.

It said that any attempt to allocate any part of southern Kaduna as grazing reserves for herdsmen would be seen as a severe provocation the people of the area and thousands of others who have been killed by those set to benefit from the grazing reserves.

“On behalf of all the 65 ethnic groups of Southern Kaduna, both at home and diaspora we wish to state our opposition to the siting of Grazing Reserves within the Southern Kaduna geographical area for several disturbing reasons,” read the statement, which was signed Solomon Musa, national president of SOKAPU.

“Between 2011 and 2015, over a period of just four years, 54 documented attacks have been launched with over 4,000 of our people killed. In most of the affected communities, women and children have been killed and brutally murdered in a most barbaric manner. While in some cases they were hacked to death, in others they were burnt alive and or blown up with explosives. Ironically, it’s in a supposedly time of peace that we have had to bury our people in mass graves.

“These attacks have rendered thousands of people homeless, as their homes were burnt, their places of worship destroyed and their food stores, barns and granaries burnt. What is even more, their water sources have also been polluted.

“They killed or dismembered some and threw them into wells! And the same people suspected of carrying out these acts of genocide that have nothing to do with grass for cows are the ones being given the government’s approval to sit on annexed land within communities that are completely agrarian.”

SOKAPU said it expected the government to have carried out wide consultation and sampling of opinions among the people of Southern Kaduna, but from its senator, members of the federal house of representatives, our royal fathers, down to tribal unions, nobody 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?” it queried.

“If the siting of the grazing reserves is mutually tied to investment potentials and other developmental incentives to our people, we are constrained to oppose it if the cost also includes human lives.

“This is because of the mutual suspicion that currently exists between our people and the herdsmen. We request the government to still go ahead with the developmental and investment aspect of the scheme but take the reserves elsewhere.

“But if the government insists on having its way, then we can confidently tell the state government that this approach will not only radicalise discontent within our zone, but create more suspicion on the real move behind the grazing reserves and the killings that have been visited upon our people.”