By Amuda Dan Sulaiman FAB.
The Kupa speaking people in Lokoja Local Government area of Kogi state on Monday rejected the proposed cattle colony in the state, saying there was no land for such venture in the area.
The people, who spoke under the aegis of the Kupa Development Association (KDA), the umbrella body of groups in the area, said none of the communities occupied by the Kupa people was available for cattle colony.
The people in a communiqué signed by the national president, Alhaji Yahaya Jibril and the national secretary, Ibrahim Muhammed, said the proposal was “repulsive and repugnant to equity, fairness and natural justice.”
The people said the federal and the state government should bury the idea of using their land for Fulani cattle colony saying “any proposal to appropriate our land for the promotion of the private business interests of Fulani herdsmen would deny us our right to our ancestral land and would amount to an avoidable time bomb”.
The KDA said the proposal was unacceptable as it would amount to a disservice to the people’s past, present and future and was as such unacceptable.
The association said, “ the cattle colony was distasteful, dangerous and with a huge potential to snowball into a major national disaster”.
It said cattle rearing was a private business and that the nation’s statutes had adequate provisions guiding the way owners should conduct their businesses.
“The cattle colonies were a thinly veiled way of subsidizing the private businesses of herdsmen”, said the KDA.
The KDA said experience in the past had shown that most of the herdsmen in Kupa land had at will attacked their hosts, adding that this was because of the general belief that they were emboldened by the tacit support they seemed to enjoy in certain official quarters.
The group lamented that farmers in the area had almost abandoned farming for fear of attacks by herdsmen because of the threat posed by the herdsmen.
The KDA said instead of the cattle colony, the government should revive the old cattle ranches advised and encourage herdsmen to set up similar ones for their use.
It added that such step would reduce tension between the herdsmen and farmers, encourage the establishment of allied industries to produce cattle feeds and promote the application of modern technology.
