Miyetti Allah: Compensation Should be Given to Herdsmen Affected in the Recent Benue Killings

 

Herdsmen under the aegis of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) has appealed to the Federal Government to pay compensation to herdsmen that were affected in the recent clash with farmers in Benue state in other parts of the country. The National Secretary of MACBAN, Alhaji Baba Ngelzarma, made the appeal while briefing newsmen in Abuja on Sunday on the position of the association to the crisis between farmers and herdsmen across the country.

According to Ngelzarma, no fewer than 1,000 of its members including women and children have been killed and 20,000 cattle rustled between June 2017 and January 2018 during crises in various states. He called for the setting up of a Federal Judicial Commission of Inquiry to access the killings in order to unravel the truth and offenders.

”We call on the government to pay compensation to victims of all crises to reduce their level of suffering. “If the government accepts that, it is left for them to establish a committee that will go and access the level of damage. We have a document of members that were affected by the pastoralists in the North-East but what we discovered is that none of them were captured in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) programme because they are not sedentary. Let the government compensate. That will help calm the situation very well,’’ he said.

The National Secretary says the association had over 20 million registered members and no fewer than 50 million cattle, regretted that they were the most neglected farmers in the country. He appealed to the Federal Government to set up a Federal Ministry of Livestock Development to attend to the multidimensional needs of the industry.