200-years-old Grazing Reserve : Kadaru Community Petition Emir of Gusau over encroachment.

 

From our reporter 

 

The  residents Community of Kadaru village under Galadima ward in Gusau local government council of Zamfara State has raised alarm on looming crisis between farmers/herders over encroachment of Government Delineated Public Grazing Reserve.

 

This was contained in two different petitions to the Security Adviser to the Governor and State Director Security Service through solicitors, Nafi'u Hamza ESQ and Lasco Pwahomdi Miwa ESQ of Pearls and Falls Law Firm and P.M. Lasco & co respectively been engaged by the concern citizens of Kadaru village.

 

The petitions which wrote on behalf of Malam Bashiru, Malam Ummaru Tsalha, Abubakar Dan Yada and Alhaji Makau, have noted that 33 farmers have been captured as they illegally encroached and criminally trespassed into the over 200 years old Government Delineated Public Grazing Reserve without the consent of any constituted authority.

 

According to the petitions, there has been an eminent threats of breakdown of law and order being engendered by the ill-motivated decision of the Gusau Emirate Council to grant permission to farmers to cultivate and farm on a grazing reserve situated at Kadaru village which was specifically demarcated, carved and delineated since the reign of Sultan Abubakr III, over 200 years now.

 

Meanwhile, Governor Bello Matawalle, after being briefed on the history of the grazing area and role played to made the area exceptional in terms of security challenges had recently directed that the grazing area in Kadaru village should remain to serve as only area where herders would continue feeding their animals.

 

However, one of the petitions read, "Most disgustingly, our client was recently invited to the Gusau Emir's palace and was told that the emir has given out the said grazing reserve to farmers, for farming during dry season, with threats that any resistance by any Fulani man, would be banish from the area".

 

"Sir, clearly the decision by the Gusau Emirate Council to handover a grazing reserve for farming is not only complete affront to the untiring efforts by your administration to sustain the peace consciously achieved by this administration in a short life span, but a deliberate effort to return the entire state into circle of insecurity, unending lost of lives and property", the petition has cautioned.

 

Speaking with Nigerian tribune after a peaceful demonstration by the people of Kadaru village over the matter, a community member who preferred for anonymity cried that, a traditional leader of the community, Murtala Janwuro was made a tool  used by the Gusau Emirate in defying Governor Matawalle's efforts to sustain peace in the area

 

He further informed that, he was  invited by the Director of Agriculture of Gusau  Local Government Council who threatened that he will be banished from the local government area to elsewhere, adding that, the Deputy Governor himself, Senator Hassan Nasiha was on the opinion of converting the grazing area into the farm lands.