The Afenifere Renewal Group, (ARG), yesterday warned the Miyetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, (MACBAN), against the deliberate misrepresentation of the indigenous demography of Yorubaland, saying there is no Fulani settlement in any part of the South-West region that fits the dictionary definition of the word ‘indigenous’.
The MACBAN Secretary-General, Usman Baba-Ngelzerma, was quoted to have, during a live televinterview, said: “In Ondo and most of the southern States, we have indigenous pastoralists whose fathers were brought up in those states and those who are there today were also brought up there. So, if you ask them to go, they won’t know where to go because they know these States as their own.”
However, in a reaction to MACBAN, the ARG, in a statement it’s Publicity Secretary, Kunle Famoriyo, said, “There is no Fulani man or woman living in any part of South-West that can own the ancestral history of the community as his or her family’s history. Conversely, there is none among the Fulani families that first settled in Yorubaland, whose history of migration cannot be told by the indigenous Yoruba people.
The group’s spokesperson noted that “migration is a global phenomenon and anyone should be able to live in any part of the world that suits his or her ambition” but insisted that “the ease of integration of a settler into a society is never determined by the settler’s terms, but by his or her readiness to abide by the laws and norms of the society”.
According to him, “As the saying goes, when in Rome, do as Romans do; MACBAN members and other Fulani herdsmen want to settle here on their own terms and by employing the most repugnant and vicious strategy, which the Ondo State governor, Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu SAN, has been stood firmly against”.
