Bauchi gov reacts after backlash over AK47 comment
By Samuel Luka, Bauchi
Following widespread criticisms over his comments on herders issues, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State has said that the primary objective of his statement was to avert the dangerous prospect of nation-wide backlash.
A statement issued to journalists Sunday evening by Bala’s media aide, Alhaji Mukhtar Gidado, expressed dismay that the critics erroneously presumed that the governor supports some criminal Fulani herdsmen.
The statement said the governor has never supported or justified criminality by anyone, no matter the person’s ethnic nationality, but he rather admonished in the interest of national unity, to avoid criminalising any ethnic group.
“By extension, the Governor made it abundantly clear that it will be inappropriate to label any one tribe based on the crimes of a few members of the ethnic group”, the statement stressed.
“To the extent that not every herdsman is a criminal, the Governor’s reference to AK47 was simply to put in perspective, the predicament and desperation of those law-abiding Fulani herdsmen who, while carrying out their legitimate cow-rearing business, have become serial victims of cattle rustling, banditry, kidnapping and assassination.”
Gidado said that the Fulani are the people who, in the absence of any protection from the security agencies, are forced to resort to self-help, to defend both their means of livelihood and their lives.
The statement noted that as a constitutionalist as proved by the Governor all through his political career, he will be the last person to advocate a subversion of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as he has not done so in the past.
Gidado said his principal’s description of forests as “no man’s land” is a carry-over from his own geo-political environment where a pastoralist could set up camp, in any forest, for a few weeks without causing any uproar or opposition.
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He said to interpret such a temporary stay as a form of ‘land grab’ by the Fulani herdsmen is completely incorrect, adding that in actual fact, neither does such temporary habitation of the forest inconvenience anyone.
The statement noted that Bala Mohammed is very familiar with the Land Use Act, including the criteria for land acquisition and cannot therefore seek to undermine the statute which, as Governor, he has sworn to uphold.
Gidado said that the statement of the governor was intended to caution all stakeholders to guard against escalating the tension, just as many patriotic stakeholders, particularly from the North, have been working round the clock to avert reprisal actions that could throw the entire country into a cauldron of unimaginable proportions.
The statement said rather than vilify the Bauchi helmsman it is incumbent on all those criticising him to admonish those governors whose lack of restraint is responsible for the escalation of this crisis.
It explained that Mohammed’s antecedents, as a bridge-builder, humanist and nationalist are so well known that he will never, under any circumstances, deliberately fuel any national crisis or subvert the Constitution.
The statement reminded all stakeholders in the Nigeria project that the delicate nature of the country’s diversity that is interwoven in many aspects calls for reasoned circumspection in handling inter-ethnic hostility of the nature that the ejection of herdsmen from parts of the country is degenerating into.
