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Afenifere slams Buhari over order to reopen grazing routes

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Pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, berated the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) on Sunday for directing the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, to re-open the grazing routes throughout the country.

The group’s statement comes in reaction to the president’s Democracy Day speech delivered in a nationwide broadcast on June 12 Democracy Day as well as interviews on Thursday and Friday last week on Arise Television and the NTA.

According to Tribune, the group expressed disappointment that the speech exposed his administration as one bent on taking steps that were not in the best interests of the majority of Nigerians.

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Afenifere further opined that Buhari’s plan to re-open grazing routes as well as his confession on how he determined who occupied positions at the national level seemed to indicate that his government was operating a constitution that was different from the 1999 Constitution that all Nigerians were aware of.

Citing a section of the Land Use Act, the group noted that even when the Federal Government wants to use a portion of land, it had to seek the consent of the governor of the state concerned.

The statement read partly: “We have some questions for Mr President and the Attorney General in this respect. One, who created the so-called grazing routes? At what time in our history did our founding fathers gather to designate specific routes from the North to the South as ‘grazing routes’?

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“Two, assuming without conceding, that there were so-called grazing routes, what would now happen to structures that have been built in areas where the so-called routes are to be re-opened? Would such structures, including residences and factories, be pulled down so that cows would have places to graze? Compared to what would be lost economically, socially, politically and in security terms if these structures are to be pulled down, is it not better to encourage the building of ranches? We can go on and on.”

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“Why talking of grazing routes in this age when ranching is the fad in all civilized climes?” the group queried.

“Nigerians were far better off in virtually everything in 2015 than they are presently. For the President to claim that the country is better now than in 2015 clearly shows that he is not in touch with reality or that he has a different measurement when comparing the two eras,” Afenifere stated.

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