By SANYA ADEJOKUN

A friend and former running mate to President Muhammadu Buhari, Pastor Tunde Bakare has revealed that top on the priority of what he would advise the president the next time that they will meet is that open grazing of cattle is obsolete and must be stopped.

He said that he had lived in the north and now live in the south but that insecurity had never been this bad in the country.

Speaking on a television programme monitored in Abuja on Thursday, founder of the Citadel of Global Community Church said he does not send text messages to Buhari and covid-19 had made it almost impossible now to see him.

“I saw him late last year. There is nothing you have heard me say in public that has not been shared even more in private conversations.

“Open grazing is obsolete and it needs to end. As soon as I have the opportunity to see Mr President, I will discuss it with him. It needs to end because the nations of the earth have moved beyond it.

“I was in Glasgow; I was in Israel. There are so many things we can do about agricultural pastoralism that would stop all the trouble in our land.”

He expressed the desire that “Mr President, his government and the armed forces will be up to the task of not only dealing with terrorists in such a way that we can sit on the table in brotherhood and not tear ourselves apart. We need to say together and act.”

Bakare declared that property laws must be respected and all pastoralists need to register so that you can know who they are and where they are going.

“It is a private business and must not generate all the heat that it is currently generating.

“If our laws will not stop those invading people’s farms in the name of pastoralism and property rights will not be respected, then the government is not doing what it should do.”

While describing Sunday Adeyemo popularly known as Sunday Igboho as looking “like a man who wants to fight for his people because they were murdered, they were raped” however, warned him to operate within the ambits of the law.

Indiscriminate violence is an ill wind that will blow no one any good. Before you attack the Fulanis in the South West, remember there are Yoruba and other ethnic nationalities living in their own communities too and if they will open fire on them, it will be so indiscriminate.

“We must avert it before it gets out of hand.” (Nigerian Tribune)

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