Benue Youths Disagree With Buhari’s Dubai Comments On Anti-Grazing Law

Following his recent comment on why Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State left the All Progressives Congress, APC, the Tiv Youths Organisation, TYO has taken a dig at Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari while addressing the Nigerian Community in Dubai recently during the Annual Investment Meeting, AIM was quoted to have said Ortom left the APC owing to unresolved issues concerning open-grazing of cattle in Benue State.

The President also reportedly said Nigerian Fulani herdsmen were known to be peaceful and that those killing in Benue were not from Nigeria.

But the TYO in a statement by its President General, Timothy Hembaor, however faulted and frowned at Buhari’s comment saying, “It was a confirmation of Buhari’s anti-Benue posturing.”

Ortom had in 2017 enacted the Anti Open Grazing and Ranches Establishment Law, ostensibly to protect farmers and herdsmen alike.

Hembaor described as laughable the assertion by President Buhari that those carrying out killings in Benue were not Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria and also took a swipe at the President over another comment credited to him that politicians converted areas that were earmarked as grazing routes in the sixties to their private farms.

“It is most saddening that President Buhari will be talking about grazing routes that were created in the sixties. What was the population of Nigeria at the time? What is the population now?

“So, you see this has clearly shown the President’s bias towards his Fulani brothers even as the President of the country and we as a body are solidly behind governor Ortom which was why we overwhelmingly voted him back into office,” the statement added.