FCT: Sultan meets with Miyetti Allah over ‘Fulani stigmatisation’, urges respect for authorities

SULTAN of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar, has expressed displeasure over the sweeping generalisation that all Fulani herdsmen are criminals.

He made this known while meeting with the  leadership of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) over the challenges facing herders in the country.

Speaking during the meeting held in Abuja, the monarch the Sultan noted that there is need to find workable solutions to address security and socioeconomic challenges confronting members of the association.

The Sultan, who is the chairman board of trustees of the association, told members of MACBAN to prove to their various host communities in the South that they are not perpetrators of most dastardly acts whose blame is often laid at their doorstep.

The monarch, who noted that it is not every criminality perpetrated in the country that is done by the Fulanis, urged herders to respect constituted authorities and not engage in acts capable of tarnishing their reputations.

Also speaking, a senior advisor to the Sultan, Usman Bugaje, said the objective of the meeting was to seek solutions to the problems affecting the Fulanis in the country.

“We are helping at the secretariat level to bring out the issues and see how we can look at other economic, social and even ethnic dimensions to the problems.

“And, there are timelines put to it, we have agreed that there will be timeline, we are not going to leave it open.

“Because we need to get it done within one year maximum from now if all the stakeholders are ready to cooperate,” Bugaje said.

On his part, Baba Ngelzarma from the national secretariat of MACBAN, urged the government to initiate programmes that would take idle pastoralist out of criminality and engage them in learning other skills in addition to cattle rearing.