Governor Ishaku Is Answerable Only To Taraba People, Emir Sanusi Told

The Taraba state government has told Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II that Governor Darius Ishaku is answerable only to the people of the state that voted him.

Sanusi, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, had in an interview with The Punch newspapers said he had warned the Taraba governor against going on with the anti-grazing bill but was rebuffed.

“I can confirm that I personally spoke to Governor Darius Ishaku before his public hearings on his law and begged him to slow down until he has worked out proper implementation but he refused,” Sanusi said.

In a statement on Sunday by Emmanuel Bello, Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to Governor Ishaku, the state government said any private warning would have been resisted by the people of the state who voted for the governor.

“Even if he (Emir Sanusi) had warned him privately, the state’s citizens still would have taken exception to that fact: that the governor they elected is being warned over what they want from him. Governor Ishaku is, first and foremost, answerable only to the people who voted him. The idea that a monarch sitting in Kano can summon and warn him is beyond the people’s comprehension. Sovereignty lies with the people,” Bello said in the statement.

According to him, “the anti-open grazing bill, now a law, is the result of the collective agreement of the entire people as represented by the House of Assembly. In a sense, the law is even above the governor, who is also a citizen.

“The law, for emphasis, is not targeting anyone. It is, even as the cerebral Emir noted, for better production of cows and diary products.”

The statement expressed surprise how the “emir came about his figures of 800 as the number of Fulani that perished in the Mambilla crisis. As the governor keeps saying, all lives matter to him. During that unfortunate crisis on the beautiful Mambilla, there were casualties on both sides and the governor mourned all those who perished. He’s more interested in forestalling further carnage than counting corpses which we are still grieving over.”

Bello further stated that the anti-grazing law is aimed at healing wounds, stressing that “we are hoping that by limiting the contact of farmers and herders through ranching, we can check the confrontations. Because, as long as herders get into farming lands, destroy crops and hurt people, there won’t be peace. We are also checking the incidences of cattle rustling. Before the law was passed, we had a public hearing where we discussed all the fears, concerns of all cattle owners. The process of making the law carried everyone along.”