The National Secretary of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore Fulani Socio-cultural Association, Engr Saleh Alhassan, has said those persecuting Fulani in the South, have forgotten how former President Goodluck Jonathan, became President following the incapacitation of late President Umar Yar'Adua, back in 2010.
Alhassan in a statement on Friday, said the Governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed who is a Fulani from the North, played a major role in Jonathan's eventual emergence as Acting President at the time, before finally taking over as President following the death of Yar'Adua.
Alhassan also lavished praise on the Bauchi state Governor for standing up for herdsmen who are currently being 'persecuted across the country.'
He said the governor has distinguished himself from the rest by properly assessing the conflict between herders and farmers in the country, and not being afraid to defend herdsmen, while others are more concerned about their political ambitions.
He described Mohammed as the “only lone voice among his peers in the North to come out openly in the defense of the Fulani pastoralists that are being persecuted across many states through enactment of negative obnoxious laws against their means of livelihoods and the issuance of illegal eviction notices from their places of abode against the constitutional provisions.
“Mohammed has treaded where angels are scared to tread in the past. He has taken what every politician will consider as political risk in the past by holding divergent views where others have failed or chicken out. So his current position on the herders/farmers conversation is not strange or out of context,” he said.
Describing Mohammed as detribalized politician, Alhassan said in 2010 when President Umaru Yar’Adua was incapacitated, despite threat from the cabals Bala Mohammed went ahead to invoke the “Doctrine of necessity”, where Vice President Goodluck Jonathan then was made acting President.
This he said was because the governor believes in the unity and peaceful co-existence of Nigeria as one indivisible country.
Alhassan said the governor should be applauded for providing purposeful leadership particularly to the north at this trying moments in our nation’s history. “Those attempting to silence him are only
undertaking an exercise in futility as majority northern masses, particularly the pastoralists have seen a leader and savior at this critical time and are solidly behind him”.
He said that Govenor Bala has refused to be like his counterparts, the governor of Benue State, Mr Samuel Ortom whose only achievement according to him is raising ethnic militia and gang leaders that have been unleashing mayhem in the state and creation of obnoxious anti-grazing laws; and Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State who he said has proven to be a disgrace to the legal profession by creating an ethnic militia (Amotekun) that is now unleashing terror and mayhem on innocent herders and northerners living in the south-west.