The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN) has appealed to the Federal Government to give palliatives to herdsmen across the country.
MACBAN said in a statement on Tuesday that the herders need a social support programme to support for the huge losses they have suffered to cattle rustling, banditry, kidnappings and climate change.
The statement was issued by the associations’ president, Muhammad Kiruwa and National Secretary, Baba Othman Ngelzarma after a meeting with the Chairman of its Board of Trustees (BoT), and the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III.
The association also urged the Federal Government to take action against a local criminal gang called ‘Yansakai’ in Kebbi and Niger states. This group has allegedly been responsible for the death of 153 herders within March 2020 to January 2021.
The communique read partly; “It also calls on the Federal Government to introduce social support programmes to alleviate the huge losses of livestock; over five million cattle have been lost as a result of banditry, cattle rustling, kidnapping and climate change,” the communique reads partly.
“The meeting calls on the Federal Government to carry out sensitization and re-orientation programmes for pastoralists and revamp the nomadic education programme for their children. It also calls on the Federal Government to deal decisively with our porous borders that makes it possible for the massive proliferation of arms and impose the implementation of ECOWAS transhumance certificate protocol to check influx of herdsmen from neighbouring countries”
