From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Former governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, has advised the Southern governors not to waste their time in making anti-open grazing laws.
The Southern governors who met in Lagos last week have agreed that the various states in the region effective from September 1 end open grazing of cattle in their states.
Speaking in Kano during an interview with a select group of journalists, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain stated that the proposed law to check the activities of herders was unnecessary, saying that that particular lifestyle of roaming from forest to forest was bound to evolve away in the face of modernity without requiring any particular intervention.
“It is very basic…whether government intervenes or not, whether there is grazing law or not, this kind of culture of roaming around with cows would simply disappear, something is going to happen. So, why we keep punishing ourselves, losing our sleep, wasting our energy over an issue, which is simply evolutionary?
“One day, maybe in the next 50 years, you will not find any cow in the forest. You will find cows, like they do in America, in area where they produce the grass for the pasture, where they do the milking and others. It is just because we are simply in a hurry. You cannot simply alter a culture, a tradition, through a law, which is about 100 years old. You can’t do that.
“There are some things that are very simple to understand, but which are made very difficult because of political interest. You don’t have to make a law for grazing. Time would wind it away,” he stated.
Lamido also predicted that the sympathizers and supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari would never allow Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to become Nigeria’s next president in 2023.
He said that the promoters of the Buhari’s Presidency would most certainly shun the Tinubu option in 2023 fearing that his emergence would automatically dwarf their eight-year performance and erase their place in history.
His words: “In 2023, the emerging political scenario is that anybody with a personality, they would not put him there. If you put Tinubu there, he would bury Buhari’s achievement.
“This is because Tinubu is focused, he knows what he is doing as a leader. He builds people, he builds the economy. He has so much going for him that they just envy him.
“And, therefore, they would never allow him to get to the presidency because if he gets there, his achievements would simply bury Buhari’s and make nonsense of his presidency. They would not allow him.”
Lamido, who scored the Buhari administration low on all fronts, starting from security to the Nigeria economy, including the management of the various crises currently bedeviling the country, regretted that all these problems are signs of bad leadership.
He said that anybody who is Nigeria’s president should be able to apply the measures of good leadership as specified in all the books, adding that once that is done, things would get better and Nigeria would be back on track.