TheCable

Bello Bodejo, national president of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, says the association will not support a southern candidate for the presidency in 2023.

In an interview with The Sun, Bodejo said northerners manage the country better than their counterparts in the south.

“Even though Nigeria is one, we are not going to support a southerner as president. A president from the north is better because northerners are better managers of the nation than southerners,” he said.

“The north has demonstrated that there is no difference among them in the region. They don’t show this is Fulani, this is Hausa, and this is this and that, unlike in the south. Northern people have managed the country better than southerners.

“If your enemy asks you to join him to scatter your father’s house, can you support him to break your father’s house? You shouldn’t do that. But if he overshadows you and you help him to accomplish that, you would cry later.

“It will be very difficult for a southerner to manage Nigeria the way a northerner would. The northerners that are ruling or governing were trained by our leaders that ruled the country before.”

Bodejo also spoke on the grazing routes, adding that states should return areas earlier marked for reserves to herders.

“RUGA is politicians’ language of politicians, while cattle colony is the language of people who want to eat government money. We have grazing reserves,” he said.

“All these governors, before they were born, we had these grazing reserves. Some were gazetted, while others were not.

“Why they don’t want to give us back the grazing reserves is what I don’t know. Last two weeks, the governor of Jigawa invited me to come and see the kind of grazing reserves they have and I spent five days visiting them.”

He also accused Samuel Ortom, governor of Benue, of “playing politics with the Fulani”.

“Ortom wants to be a hero by force. After the end of his tenure, even to be a councillor in his village, he can’t get it. He is doing politics with the Fulani,” Bodejo said.

“He was the first person that called for the stoppage of Fulani from grazing their cattle, but we went to court to stop his evil plot and that is why he is running here and there, asking Buhari to declare Fulani organisations as terrorist groups.

“Which name has he not called Fulani? Nigerians should ignore him. He is a joker.”