BUHARI REGIME'S APPROACH TO SECURITY IS AKIN TO TALIBAN AGENDA IN AFGHANISTAN - PLACES MORE PRIORITY ON WELFARE OF CATTLE - Ortom
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Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state was in the ruling party, APC, with President Muhammadu Buhari until 2019 when the former switched his partisan allegiance to the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP). So, the Benue state governor knows more than many about President Buhari and his governance agenda as the head of central government in Abuja. Gov. Ortom had severally blamed President Buhari for giving a deaf ear to all the preemptive intelligence given to him and the security agencies in Abuja concerning the threats issued by the leader of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore to attack and kill the law-abiding residents of Benue. Even after the deadly attacks were carried out as threatened, President Buhari and his government’s security agencies have been unable and unwilling to do anything to apprehend the known culprits or prevent future attacks.
It appears as if the Buhari regime has now found an answer to its past failures to create cow colonies, Ruga settlements and other land-use policies that decidedly favor the interests of pastoralists who are mostly of the Fulani ethnic stock like the president. Buhari has recently signed an executive order for the immediate implementation of the so-called “grazing reserves” and “grazing routes” in twenty-five states of Nigeria. Names of these states are yet unknown. But since there are only 19 states in the North, at least, six of the 25 states selected for the implementation of Buhari’s executive order must be based in the South.
The Southern Governors’ Forum has met twice since May 2021 to affirm their resolve to ban open grazing in all states of the South. Buhari’s latest move puts his administration on a war path against the political leaders of Southern Nigeria. Benue state, which is situated in the Middle Belt, had banned open grazing as far back as 2017. The same Buhari, who would not raise a finger to stop the Fulani herdsmen militia rampaging through the Middle Belt and South, is instead now showing enormous zeal in enforcement of land-grab policies to favor his ethnic Fulani nomadic pastoralists wherever he can. The obduracy in such a bone-headed act explains why Governor Ortom likens Buhari to the Afghan Taliban.
Perhaps, President Buhari feels that the provisions of the imposed fraudulent 1999 Constitution empower him to impose his will in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria from behind his desk at the Aso Rock Villa. The Southern governors, by banning open grazing in their states, implicitly reject the aspect of the flawed constitution (68-item Federal Exclusive Legislative List) that prevents them from enforcing the ban on open grazing in their respective jurisdictions. The Southern governors are thus in sync with the overall thrust of the NINAS’ Constitutional Force Majeure (CFM) and the indigenous stakeholders of the Middle Belt and South that make up the coalition.
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Okenwa.
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