The Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum (SMBLF) has warned against the alleged attempt to take over the ethnic lands in the Middle Belt region and hand them over to Fulani pastoralists under the federal government’s new National Livestock Policy.

SMBLF said it “suspects that the true aim of this policy is the creation of permanent settlement zones for nomadic Fulani herdsmen, whose violent activities over the years have contributed to the capture and occupation of thousands of square kilometres of land across the Middle Belt and even parts of southern states.”

In a statement signed by Afenifere chieftain and Chairman of SMBLF, Oladipo Olaitan, the group stated that “apart from the genocide they (Fulani herdsmen) have been accused of carrying out in the Middle Belt, they have rendered millions homeless, and cannot be handed the lands of their victims as a reward for their heinous crimes.”

The body said it was alarmed “by the audacious attempt by the federal government to take over lands belonging to ethnic communities in the Middle Belt under a spurious pilot scheme being introduced in the name of a New National Livestock Policy.”

“It is striking that this experiment is being concentrated almost entirely in the Middle Belt, despite the vast expanse of sparsely populated and unused land available in many parts of the far north, where Fulani emirs dominate most of the lands,” it noted.

“The scheme is being presented as a pilot, but if it is not firmly opposed by the communities being short-changed, it will inevitably be expanded to other parts of the country, including the southern states.”

SMBLF explained that it was not opposed to modern livestock production, ranching or the development of the livestock value chain but strongly rejects what it described as “the opaque, coercive and discriminatory manner in which this policy is being pursued to the exclusive advantage of nomadic Fulani herdsmen.”

Calling on the communities and governments of the southern states to reject the policy, SMBLF told the federal government that “the Land Use Act of 1978 is not a licence for arbitrary land grabbing.

“It vests rural land in local councils, recognises customary rights of occupancy, and allows revocation only for overriding public interest. It also protects agricultural land, including fallow land, as continuing community property.”

The Southern and Middle Belt leaders noted that “ranching is an economic enterprise that is privately driven.” They maintained that “the government cannot disguise compulsory land acquisition for specific economic actors as public interest.”

According to them, records show that some of these nomadic pastoralists are not Nigerian citizens, and “any policy that ignores these realities while allocating vast ancestral lands to them under state protection is unacceptable to the indigenous people of the Middle Belt and the South.

“We have seen similar attempts before under different names, including the rejected RUGA and Cattle Colony proposals, which Nigerians resisted because of their implications for land ownership and demographic restructuring. The SMBLF will not accept such a policy.”

Meanwhile, the group demands full and transparent disclosure of the proposed ranching sites, the legal instruments for their acquisition, the ownership structure, security concerns, the beneficiaries, the size of the lands involved and the source of funding.