Babatunji Wusu –
The Peoples Democratic Party of Benue State has rejected plans to build a Fulani colony in the state.
Last week, the Vice President, Kashim Shetima, stated at a public function in Maiduguri, the capital city of Borno State, that the current administration had approved the construction of 1,000 houses for the Fulani community in Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, and Benue states, with all the ancillary facilities of schools, clinics, veterinary clinics, and ranches.
The state’s opposition PDP, through its press secretary, Bemgba Iortyom, condemned the establishment of Fulani colonies as a ‘deathly serious nature’ and warned that the people of the state would violently oppose it.
Remember that the PDP administration in the state, led by Samuel Ortom, rejected identical policies implemented by the previous administration of Muhammad Buhari on multiple occasions.
In a statement sent to journalists in Makurdi on Monday, Iortyom urged the state governor, Rev Fr Hyacinth Alia, to remove the state off the list.
The party explained that there was never a peer-to-peer basis for Benue’s inclusion among the other selected states, all of which had sizable indigenous Fulani populations with significant land holdings on which such colonies may be sited.
Parts of the declaration read, “In other words, in those other states where a Fulani population already exists and would be seamlessly accommodated therein, such colonies could be natural.”
“Benue has no indigenous Fulani population with land holdings suitable for establishing such a colony.”
“Secondly, it is unjust and ultimately insensitive to establish a colony for the Fulani with all the facilities for modern living in a state where victims of the genocidal atrocities committed by those same Fulani are still displaced from their lands and means of livelihood and living in camps that resemble Nazi Germany’s concentration camps during World War II.”
The party regretted that the commitment made by former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on behalf of the Federal Government in 2018 to resettle people displaced back to their lands, as well as a guarantee of 10 billion to them, had not been fulfilled.
“That promise by VP Osinbajo has yet to be fulfilled, and the displaced persons in the IDP camps are still being attacked and killed by Fulani herdsmen right in the camps, and they dare not venture near their plundered and desolate ancestral lands to scavenge for food.”
