Grazing cattle destroy UNILORIN’s multi-million naira research farms, VC laments

Read Time:1 Minute, 53 Second

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. Sulyman Age Abdulkareem, has cried out over the destruction of the University’s multi-million-naira research and training farms as well as sundry economic trees’ plantations by cattle illegally grazing on the vast lands of the institution.

Following this unfortunate development, the management of the institution last Thursday (February 8, 2018) held a security meeting with the leaders of the 11 Fulani settlements on the University land. The meeting was witnessed by representatives of law enforcement agencies comprising the Nigerian Police Force, the Department of State Security Services (DSS) and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).

At the meeting held at the institution’s Auditorium Basement, Prof. Abdulkareem disclosed that the University management would no longer tolerate illegal grazing of cows on its land. He, therefore, told the illegal settlers, who have started building permanent structures to vacate the University land in the interest of peace.

This was coming almost a year after the University authority first issued a quit notice to the illegal settlers.

Unilorin Bulletin recalls that the University management had on April 26, 2017 handed down a seven-day ultimatum to the Fulani herdsmen encroaching on the University land to quit the campus, but the quit notice was never complied with.

Also, on May 11, 2017, twenty-eight persons, comprising Fulani herdsmen, Yoruba and Hausa farmers, were dragged to an Ilorin Chief Magistrate’s Court for allegedly trespassing into the University land, destroying the school’s plantation and perpetrating other unauthorised activities on the University campus.

The accused persons were alleged to have resorted to poisoning the institution’s dam with chemicals, while also engaging in illegal felling of economic trees from which they made charcoal.

Prof. Abdulkareem said, “We have a multi-million naira programme that is currently at stake now because they (herders) have gone to the extent of uprooting tubers of cassava for their cattle to feed on. We cannot conduct any research or training on the farm again because each time we get to a point where their cattle can feed on it… they go back there and destroy it.”

The herdsmen appealed to the University management for time and pledged to come up with a response on the matter by February 22, 2018.