insensitive as ever to the carnage being committed by nomadic herdsmen, the Federal Government has declared that it will, in 2017, reopen the nationwide cattle grazing routes. The routes have been abandoned for decades, but in a move designed to placate Fulani herdsmen, Mahmud Bello of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development stated that the routes would be revived, giving livestock the right of way across Nigeria. This is a provocative agenda. It can only escalate the violent campaign that has rendered the country a killing field for the Fulani herdsmen. If handled with levity, it could pose a threat to Nigeria’s stability.
In spite of the opposition of farming communities across the country, from the North-Central to the South, Bello said, “We are going to provide 6,000 kilometres of cattle routes across the country; we are going to open the primary routes first, while the states and local governments are expected to launch the secondary routes.” This is thoughtless; it is insulting to the communities whose people are being massacred on their farms. Deliberately, government is about to deepen an age-old conflict by decreeing a solution that, once again, appeases only Fulani interests and jeopardises those of the other ethnic nationalities.
Carving out grazing routes in this age is primitive. It is incendiary and suspicious when cattle grazers are being given official imprimatur to roam freely on other people’s farmlands. This is an open call to deadly dissonance, but Bello says opening grazing routes will prevent “people, particularly farmers, from encroaching upon stock routes, grazing areas and selling those areas that have been mapped out as graving reserves since 1962.” This is inverted logic; most unreasonable. Cattle herders have no special rights above farmers, fishermen and landowners in Central and Southern Nigeria.
The devastating imprint of grazing is all too evident across the country. Many farmers have lost their sources of livelihood to cattle encroachment and violent herdsmen. Protests have intensified in several parts of the country, including Anambra and Delta states, over the violence of Fulani herdsmen. Early in 2016, herdsmen slaughtered over 400 people in Agatu, Benue State, and confiscated their land. In April 2016, they wasted 40 people in Ukpabi-Nimbo, Enugu State. On the pretence that their cattle were rustled in post-election violence in 2011, Fulani herdsmen massacred 808 people, destroyed 1,422 houses, 16 churches, 19 shops, and one primary school in 53 villages in Southern Kaduna, Kaduna State, in the three months to January 2017, the Catholic Church said.
The heinous crimes of the herdsmen placed them as the fourth deadliest terror group in the world in the 2015 Global Terrorism Index. The GTI, an Australia-based NGO, estimated that Fulani herdsmen killed 1,229 Nigerians in 2014. Yet, there has been no let-up. Last weekend, herdsmen raided Asso village in Kagoma, Jama’a Local Government Area in Southern Kaduna, slaughtering 12 people. Which business is worth shedding so much blood for?
Cattle herding is just like every other business. To make it flourish – as is done in India, Brazil, Australia and the United States – Fulani herdsmen have to follow sound business principles. Abuja cannot cede land that belongs to others to them wherever it desires. This is unacceptable and illegal. In truth though, Fulani herdsmen provide essential services. But so do other Nigerians. Bello projects that the new plan will enable a cow to produce 25 litres of milk daily as against the current 1.5 litres daily, but the grazing route proposal is wide of the mark as a means of achieving this target.
Audu Ogbeh, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, should cancel the plan immediately. If he does not, that will rank as a major failure of this administration. The 1962 mapping is obsolete and unjust, a throwback to an unchallenged hegemony of the North. It does not take into account the divisive developments over the past three decades in which herdsmen operations have mimicked terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
Opening up grazing routes is not a substitute for ranching. It is an ephemeral solution laced with poison. But ranching guarantees profitability, increases exports and eliminates conflict between farmers and nomads. As far back as the 16 th century, the Spanish had developed ranching to improve returns on livestock. Brazil, which exported 625 million tons of livestock products in 2000, now has 226 million heads of cattle, says the United States Department of Agriculture (the second highest in the world, after India). This is a product of ranching. In comparison, Nigeria, which is hobbled by the archaic practice of open herding, had an estimated 19.5 million cattle, according to a 2011 National Agricultural Sample Survey released by Ogbeh in 2016.
To defuse tension, government’s strategy should motivate Fulani cattle owners to pitch for ranching. In place of grazing routes, they could be offered low-interest loans to establish ranches, and given tax holidays and provided with infrastructure to secure them and their livestock from bandits. To avoid the intermittent bloodshed blighting the landscape, herdsmen who perpetrate killings should, however, be prosecuted.
In food security, crop farming is as critical as rearing livestock. Therefore, the Federal Government should reverse this obvious sectional and fractious agenda. We need a balanced agriculture policy to promote farming and livestock production for our economic development. Every state should resist this provocative land grab.
