Arsonists target Nigerian anti-grazing campaigner
Unidentified people have torched a house belonging to a Nigerian who campaigns against allowing cattle herders to graze for free in the south-west of the country, Oyo State police say.
Fulani herders and their families walk for hundreds of kilometres from the extreme north to central Nigeria and beyond at least twice a year to find the best grazing land for their cattle. But this often leads to friction with the communities they visit.
Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, had recently asked Fulani herders to leave the south-west, accusing them of kidnapping and other crimes.
At the expiration of a seven-day ultimatum, he led a demonstration in an area where some herders were living in Oyo, and some houses and properties were burned, police say.
Mr Igboho denied any involvement in that attack.
Police spokesman Olugbenga Fadeyi said that in the early hours of Tuesday “hoodlums” had shot sporadically in the air before torching Mr Igboho’s house in the city of Ibadan.
He was not in the house at the time, as he had moved to a new home last year.
On Monday, governors in the region met with the main association of cattle breeders in the country and they agreed to ban all forms of free range grazing in the region.
Clashes between farmers and herders – over access to land and grazing rights – have killed thousands of people over the past two decades in Nigeria.
