A group of farmers in the South West under the aegis of Oodua Redemption Alliance (ORA) on Thursday in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital threatened to retaliate further attacks on their members by Fulani herdsmen. The aggrieved farmer claimed that the quest by the federal government to establish cattle colony across the country was merely intended to seize their lands and hand them over to Fulanis.
They called on herdsmen in the region to relocate their livestock to the reserve areas recently designated by the Kano and Niger state governments. They warned that failure to do so, they would retaliate any destruction or attack on any person from Yoruba extraction in any part of the country especially in Lagos, Osun, Ekiti, Kwara, Edo, Delta and Oyo states.
The group in a communiqué issued at the meeting said;
“We are conscious of the character of trail of the Fulanis that they conquer people, occupy their lands and rule over them. This led to their conquest, domination and rule over the entire Hausa land till today. We have the memory of how the Fulanis trickled the Ilorin Yorubas into capturing their land over which they rule till today.
We implore all Fulani herdsmen to vacate Yoruba land with immediate effect and relocate to Kano and Niger states or their Northern states of conquest. We are conscious of the fact that a lot of well to do people in Yoruba land also have their cattle breeding contracted to the Fulani herdsmen, we therefore implore all Yorubas in this category to withdraw their cattle with immediate effect and establish ranches, pens or byres for their cattle breeding.
The resurgence or large scale perpetration of the evil has now gotten to an uncontrollable and unacceptable level that an open confrontation or war has now been provoked between the Yorubas and the Fulanis. Before the war is ignited, we have deemed it fit to call this summit where we discussed and made our grouse and positions known to the Nigerian government and the global community to the effect of our further intolerance of the menace on our racial pride.The basis for giving preferential or sacred cow treatment to the Fulani herdsmen whose business contribute no resources whatsoever to the coffers of Nigerian government is not there at all.
It is on the record that 95 percent of the resources sustaining Nigerian government comes from the Southern part of the country. The cattle business of the Fulani herdsmen is their personal affair which other people of the country must not be sacrificed for.
We take this opportunity to declare Mr. Ayodele Fayose the Ekiti state governor as a hero of Yoruba land for being the only Yoruba governor who took the bull by the horns by legislating against the menace of the Fulanis in his state. We, therefore, implore all other Yoruba governors to be courageous enough as to follow suit. We commiserate with Governor Samuel Ortom and the people of Benue state on the recent evil perpetrated against their kinsmen.
We also commiserate with all Yorubas’ relations who have fallen victims of the Fulani’s menace over the decades and most recently. We share our feelings with Chief Olu Falae and Admiral Samuel Afolayan a former Chief of Naval Staff of Nigeria over the wanton and massive destruction of their respective farmlands by the Fulani herdsmen.
A standing committee of representatives from each of the states shall be established to ensure the implementation of the resolutions so arrived at.”