No indigenous Fulani in Yorubaland, says Afenifere

By Uche Mbah

A Yoruba Socio-cultural group, the Afenifere Renewal Group, ARG, has advised the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, MACBAN, to get their facts right and stop misrepresenting facts.

MACBAN Secretary General, Usman Baba Ngelzerma, was said to have declared on live TV that there are indigenous Fulani in the South West.

“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 states”, he was quoted to have said.

But in a statement released by the ARG Publicity Secretary, Kunle Famoriyo, the group said there is no Fulani  settlers in Yorubaland that can be remotely described as indigenous.

“There is no Fulani man or woman living in any part of Southwest Nigeria 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”, he said.

“The deliberate use of words that confer on the Fulani people a status that is not theirs constitutes a security threat and does not portray MACBAN and its members as peace-loving people. The subtlety in Baba-Ngelzerma’s choice of words is another confirmation of the MACBAN’s alleged surreptitious plan to grab and claim ancestral land for its members through inappropriate means.

“Baba-Ngelzerma’s claim that there are Fulani people who do not know any other place as their ancestry other than their place of birth owes its plot to mischief, deliberate distortion of facts, and a devilish plan to redraw the demography of indigenes of Southwest Nigeria.”

According to the group, migration is a global phenomenon and “anyone should be able to live in any part of the world that suits his or her ambition…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.

“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, ArakunPOn Rotimi Akeredolu SAN, has been stood firmly against.”