Open grazing ban: Garba Shehu not speaking for Presidency – Akeredolu

The Ondo State Governor, Mr Rotimi Akeredolu, has lambasted the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), Mr Garba Sheu, over the latter’s recent comment on the resolutions of the 17 southern governors made at a meeting in Asaba Delta State.

Shehu, in a statement allegedly from the presidency, was quoted to have gone against the resolutions of the 17 southern governors.

Akeredolu, who described Shehu as an agent provocateur, said the presidential media aide was not speaking for President Buhari on the ban on open grazing which is one of the resolutions of the SGF.

This was contained in a statement issued by the Senior Special Assistant on Special Duties and Strategy, Dr Doyin Odebowale, on Tuesday, title ‘Mr Garba Shehu: On the trail of an agent provocateur’.

The statement read, “Anyone who has been following the utterances of this man, as well as his fellow travellers on the self-deluding, mendacious but potentially dangerous itinerary to anarchy, cannot but conclude that he works, assiduously, for extraneous interests whose game plan stands at variance with the expectations of genuine lovers of peaceful coexistence among all the peoples whose ethnic extractions are indigenous to Nigeria.

“Mr Garba must disclose, this day, the real motive(s) of those he serves, definitely not the President. He cannot continue to hide under some opaque, omnibus, and dubious directives to create confusion in the polity. The easy recourse to mendacious uppity in pushing a barely disguised pernicious agendum is well understood. The declaration that the recommendations of the Minister of Agriculture, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, a mere political appointee like Garba Shehu, are now the “lasting solutions” which eluded all the elected representatives of the people of the Southern part of the country, exposes this man as a pitiable messenger who does not seem to understand the limits of his relevance and charge.

“Mr Garba contends that “their announcement is of questionable legality”, referring to the 17 Governors of the Southern States, but the decision of certain elements to take the ancestral lands of other people to settle their kinsmen, including the “gun-wielding “killer herdsmen” and their families, and provide “veterinary clinics, water points for animals, and facilities for herders and their families including schooling through these rehabilitated reserves” for which “the Federal Government is making far-reaching and practical changes allowing for different communities to co-exist side-by-side”, does not appear to him as a comprehensive plan for land grabbing, a precursor to internal colonialism. He wants to “revive forest reserves” but seems particularly uninterested in the current position of the same law, that he and his cohorts often misinterpret to serve parochialism and greed. Governors no longer have powers over the lands in their territories. They must take instructions from appointees of the Federal Government on such matters.

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