Oyo Assembly to expedite passage of anti-open grazing bill

As the Oyo State House of Assembly resumes from recess on Monday, it plans to accelerate passage of some bills considered crucial to the realisation of the policy thrust of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration in the state.

The legislators have been on a five-week recess though they attended to emergency assignments during the period.

For instance, they held plenary to pass the reduced budget and also screened commissioner nominees within the period.

The Chairman, House Committee on Information, Hon. Kazeem Olayanju, told our correspondent on telephone on some of the major bills that will be treated with utmost priority include the anti-open grazing bill which has passed second reading and the anti-graft agency bill which has passed first reading.

Olayanju said the date for public hearing on the anti-open grazing bill will be fixed this week to accelerate passage of the bill within the shortest possible time.

The bill, he said, is important to enable government register herders in the state as a way of ending farmer-herder crisis and a method to identify intruding herders who are believed to be largely responsible for the crisis and criminality on the farms.

The public hearing was necessitated by the opposing position of many herdsmen in the state who are pushing for alternative grazing space which they described as settled grazing.

On the Oyo State Anti-Corruption Agency, Olayanju said the Assembly will consider it to enable them make progress on the efforts to establish the agency.

Makinde sent the bill to the House of Assembly to demonstrate his administration’s seriousness about fighting corruption.

He stressed that he would wave his immunity if the need arises to investigate how he administers the resources of the state.

He warned his appointees, civil servants and contractors against plundering the state, emphasizing that he will not look away no matter how close suspected culprits are to him.

Olayanju explained that the bills would have witnesses tremendous progress but for the five-week recess. Instead of giving new bills priority, therefore, he said the Assembly will first treat the crucial bills and move them towards full passage so they can oil the governance of the state.

Moved by fear, a Fulani group, the Gan Allah Fulani Development Association of Nigeria, had early August, appealed to the Assembly to consider an alternative grazing space for their members in the law being put in place. They described it as settled grazing.

Addressing reporters in Ibadan, the state capital, the group led by its National President Alhaji Sale Bayari, called on the Assembly to give the law a human face by allowing an alternative grazing space for the Fulani in the state should the law become absolutely necessary.

The Fulani group had pleaded: “We are pleading with the Oyo State House of Assembly to ensure that as interested and affected citizens of the pending law, we deserve to be heard and listened to during the public hearing of the bill so that our views and opinions as Nigerians are heard and considered without bias against or favour.”

The Chairman, Bayari noted that though members of the Assembly have a constitutional right to make laws for the good of the people of the sate, who include the Fulanis, and for the good and peace of the state, he said the law needed a human face.

He said: “We plead for an alternative grazing space for our means of livelihood, which is the cattle, which we are rearing as peasant traditional stock owners, not as commercial livestock or cattle business stakeholders, ours is the hereditary and traditional family life sustaining cattle rearing, not done on commercial basis.”

‘In the continuation of our national assignment as a Fulani ethnic association disturbed by our present and current security problem in the country especially as it affects a section of our members who have come under fire, hail and thunderstorm some Nigerians, especially the farming communities which has resulted in tensions of ethnic crises of various dimensions in the country.

“These are allegations that should have been leveled against all criminal elements within our society but unfortunately they are allegations that have been made against an ethnic, religious and a sectional group that have led to the profiling, stigmatisation and harassment of Fulani ethnic group as a whole.”

Bayari pointed out that during the meeting that was held with former president Olusegun Obasanjo in Abeokuta on the August 3 where eight states were in attendance, a lot of the problems between herders and farmers were discussed, particularly the criminality that was attributed to the Fulani ethnic group as a whole.

He recalled: “At the end of the meeting, it was all agreed that there is a national problem that needed to be addressed by all well-meaning Nigerians interest in having a prosperous, peaceful and one country that is the home of all that must be secured and protected for yet unborn generations.”