What Igbo’s Don’t Know Is That A Single Cow Is More Valuable Than Hundreds of Igbo’s — Miyetti Allah
National President of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Bello Abdullahi Bodejo, has said a cow may not mean much to other Nigerians, but to a Fulani, it is worth more than a hundred human lives.
Bodejo who had earlier claimed that Fulani have no particular settlement because they own every land in the country, insisted that cows are to them, as a brother is to someone else. He said cows don’t live in cities, therefore Abuja or Lagos are useless to a Fulani unless these cities are converted into grazing fields for their cows.
Bodejo made the statement while responding to questions in an interview with Daily Sun.
Asked why Fulani prefers forests over cities, he said, “We don’t need cities or towns. If you dash us FCT Abuja or the city of Lagos, we won’t have anything to do with it. We want a place where we continue to practice our age long culture of cattle rearing. We inherited it from our forefathers and it will continue till the end of the world.”
On why they don’t take permission before setting on lands or forests not belonging to them, he questioned, “Which forest, who has the forest?” Then added, “Any person who thinks he owns any forest should be taken to psychiatric hospital. Nobody owns any forest; forests are for Nigerians,” he declared authoritatively.
Speaking further, he said, “Fulani herdsmen have the right to move into any forest and settle there for their business. Why do farmers go and cultivate thousands of hectare of land and fence it, who gave them that land? Nobody is born with a land in this country; people were just moving from one place to another for settlement.
“Fulani are settling in every community, but we are not claiming land, we are only interested on how our cows will have food to eat.
Fulani can’t value 100 people’s lives like he can value his one cow because since he was born, he doesn’t have any business except that cow. The cow is like his own brothers and sisters. If anything happens to his cow, do you think he can leave you?
“You have two or three storey buildings and you park your cars , do you fold your hands and watch somebody come to that house carry your cars, your clothes, your wife, destroy the buildings? You must fight. The Fulani man values his cow just as you value your brother and sister and you go all out to protect them.
“They love their cows beyond description, you can’t separate them from their cows to go and stay inside town or city. The cows have names. The way you give your children names when they were born is the same way they name their cows.
“Even a person who has one thousand cows, those cows have individual names and he knows them by name; the cows have fathers, grandfathers and grandchildren. What you have in human beings – the ways names are given to people, the same way Fulani give names to their cows.
“We are cow lovers , that is why sometimes if you kiII their cows somewhere they go there to look for justice, because they see like somebody has kiIIed their brothers; they must go to see who did that and they won’t leave that person.”
