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On the night of Sunday 21st of January 2018, at about midnight, we got a report that a trailer load of Fulanis invaded our district. They were sighted along the road close to Iluke at the heart of Bunu district. Bunu is a district in Kabba-Bunu local government area of Kogi state in Nigeria. Amongst her endowments is a large and fertile landmass, peace-loving people and a serene environment, despite the underdevelopment and apparent marginalization, especially in infrastructural facilities. Agriculture is the foremost occupation.
The innocent farmers, traditional leaders and even, the vigilantes in the village had no prior information or knowledge of this strange migrants’ movement into the town. They are in excess of a hundred, mostly women and children, they came in with their food, beddings, herdsmen’s sticks, and other household things. They said; they have a letter of authority (the letter written in Hausa language was sighted and was instructive to their relocating to our land for settlement from a certain seriki in Bwari AMAC and that their male adults were said to be on their way. Another report said; they claimed to be going to another village within our district on the invitation of another seriki, but the said _seriki replied enquiry that he is not aware of their coming.
This worrisome incident happened, after the governor of Kogi State offered Kogi State to be the pilot state for the implementation of “cattle colony” and after various groups in Kogi including Okun Development Association, Bunu Peoples’ Forum and Bunu Interest Group came out openly to say NO to cattle colony on Okun land.
The Nigeria constitution does not give freedom to a group of people to settle anywhere they like without consultation with the host community and modalities agreed upon. We consider this invasion of Fulanis on our land a great security threat to our existence, especially farming,fishing,hunting, timbering etc at this crucial security moment in which the federal Government of Nigeria confirmed to have identified some terrorists in Kogi,Benue and Edo states respectively.
We, therefore, call on all meaningful Nigerians within and in diaspora, lovers of Bunu people, alongside international human rights and security bodies to come to our aid.
Bunu district,which is made up of forty four villages without a single functioning police station, talk much of an Army barracks. Only two villages have epileptic power supply,while our road networks are poor and nothing to write home about. If the government can not help us, they should not compound our problems as we are law abiding citizens and don’t deserve tension and hostile decisions as our dividend of democracy.
#BunuPeopleSayNoToColony.
– Alfred Meseko
For: Bunu Peoples Forum
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