Fulani Herdsmen: Anambra plan aerial surveillance

Fulani Herdsmen: Anambra plan
aerial surveillance

– Anambra state government says it will launch helicopter aerial surveillance to curb
activities of Fulani Herdsmen in the state
– The government also said it has set up a
special committee to foster peace between
farmers and the cattle grazers in the state
A Fulani herdsman with a riffle
As activities of Fulani I herdsmen gets more
notorious, the Anambra state government has
announced the launch of a helicopter for
aerial surveillance of the activities of
herdsmen in the state.
This was announced by the state governor,
Willie Obiano, during the Workers’ Day
celebration in Awka adding that he had set up
a special committee to foster peace between
farmers and the cattle grazers in the state.
The committee, the governor noted, was made
up of the leaders of the Hausa-Fulani
community in the state, government officials,
security agents and some representatives of
agrarian communities across the state.



“This committee has made the herdsmen to pay
compensation to communities whose crops were
destroyed by their cattle seven times in the
past. And we have also paid compensation to
the herdsmen when one community breached
the peace against them. That is the nature of
our engagement with them in Anambra State.”
He said his administration would deal
ruthlessly with the herdsmen should they
become “needlessly hostile against their host
communities.”
“There is routine helicopter surveillance across
the borders of the state to ensure that any
suspicious gathering of people(herdsmen) or
curious movements across the borders are
quickly picked up and analysed by security
experts.”
Meanwhile, as the various pressure groups in
the southern part of the country threaten to
move Fulani herdsmen from their
communities because of recent killings in
Enugu and other southern states, the National
Coordinator of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders
Association, Mr. Garus Gololo, has said such
an action may ignite national crisis.

Gololo told Punch newspaper in an interview
that: “It is only in Oyo that there are up to 2,000
herdsmen; in other parts of the South-West, they
are not more than between 200 and 800 while in
the North, there are over 30 million
southerners.”
He said the National Assembly had intervened
in the crisis between farmers and herdsmen,
insisting that “if the herdsmen have not
committed offences that warrant their being
forced out of the South, they should not be
forced out.”
Recall that one of Nigeria’s most respected
traditional rulers, the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad
Abubakar lll has commented on the ongoing
nationwide attacks by Fulani herdsmen.

Sa’ad Abubakar lll who is also the president-
General of the Jama’atul Nasir Islam
cautioned Nigerians not to brand terror
attacks with in religious and ethnic garments