UNILORIN VC Says Grazing Cattle are Destroying Varsity’s Research Farms

The Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin (UI), Sulyman Abdulkareem, has cried out over the alleged destruction of the university’s multi-million naira research and training farms by cattle illegally grazing on the vast lands of the institution.

The vice chancellor, who said the cattle also destroyed plantations of economic trees, made this known last Thursday during a security meeting with the leaders of the 11 Fulani settlements on the University land.

Details from the Security Meeting Representatives of law enforcement agencies
comprising the Nigerian Police Force, the State Security Services, SSS, and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC witnessed the meeting.

At the meeting held at the institution’s Auditorium Basement, Mr. Abdulkareem, a professor, 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 new development came almost a year after the university authority first issued a quit notice to the illegal settlers.

According to the university publication, Unilorin Bulletin, the 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 herdsmen did not comply with the quit notice.

Also on May 11, 2017, 28 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.

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