The Tiv Youths Organisation (TYO) has threatened to mobilise victims of herdsmen’s attacks nationwide to stop the occupation of their land, regain their territories and chase the attackers to Senegal, which it maintained, was their ancestral home.

Its President General Worldwide, Comrade Timothy Hembaor, in a statement yesterday in Makurdi, said their major target was the sponsors of the mayhem.

He said the herdsmen were only using their opposition to open grazing as a smokescreen to perpetrate their “deadly agenda for ethnic cleansing, annihilation, occupation and Islamisation.”

His words: “We read in several newspapers a publication credited to the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore in which they declared that no state has the power to stop their members from open grazing.

“In the publication, they also have called on their grand patron, President Muhammadu Buhari, to call the Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom, to order over the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017.

“We want to put it on record that the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore and other Fulani socio-cultural groups, which signed the communiqué upon which the report is based, are nothing but terrorist groups that have sworn to annex and occupy the Benue Valley and other fertile lands in Nigeria at all cost.”

Hembaor alleged that the “ethnic cleansing agenda of the Fulani dates back to the 18th Century when Othman Danfodio led warriors in wars of conquest. Their agenda succeeded in larger parts of northern Nigeria until the marauders came in contact with the Tiv and other ethnic groups which halted their expansionist move.”

He continued: “Now, it is obvious that the Fulani retreated and have re-organised to continue with their annexation agenda. It will be recalled that Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore confirmed the invasion and occupation drive at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, May 30, 2017.”

“The newspapers quoted the association as vowing to mobilise herdsmen in the country and beyond to invade and take over the state and that is what has been happening with the renewed vigour since January 1, 2018.” (Guardian)