Mr President, I greet you as I address a fundamental contradiction of state-building and nation-building that you seem to handle with kid-gloves, put differently, that you are sleep-walking into a political trap, perhaps, for selfish reasons, which is the prize of 2027. As late Jonathan Ihonde (the Creator of the renowned Hotel De Jordan, a Nigeria Television Authority, Benin, drama series) would say, “You have to be to be.” By way of inflection, Mr President, you must have a nation first before you can govern; everything else becomes delusional.

Mr President, you have woken up the ghost of the intrigues of occupation through internal colonies by the Fulani hegemons who see Nigeria as their patrimony.  The idea of establishing ranches in the country’s six political zones is the trigger. It was partly, if not most fundamentally, the reason for the contrived return of late President Muhammadu Buhari, 2015-2023. You may not have heard what Alhaji Buba Galadima said to the effect that the return of Buhari was plotted to halt the separatist impulses in the country, namely, Odua People’s Congress and the Niger-delta militants that pose a threat to the “Fulani Possession”, called Nigeria.

Your position was first heralded by the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, at a national security dialogue held on Wednesday, July 23. At that occasion, he called for the creation of ranches as a way of resolving the farmer-herder crisis in the country. In his words: “To address insecurity, two things are basic. We must be able to control the movement of animals across the region. In doing that, it is important we create ranches. Ranches will do a great deal in securing our control and will prevent the conflict between the Farmer-Herders clashes.

Second, we must learn to stop killing animals crossing into farms. What is done is you arrest the animals and compensations are made. If we are able to address these two things, over 65 per cent of challenges we have against farmers will be dealt witt”.  The defence chief further noted that: “We must embrace modern livestock practices. Creating ranches across the country is not just an agricultural necessity, but a security imperative…We cannot continue to deploy troops endlessly to solve what is essentially a governance and development issue.”

The above appeared simplistic and innocuous. The General seemed to have forgotten the confession of some Fulani that they were armed by their minders and that hitherto they did not know anything about guns, or AK47. He has even forgotten his Southern Zaria people who are daily massacred while providing for their enemies a “Final Solution.”

Intriguingly, and with a dose of ambiguity, the Chief of Army Staff, General Oluyede, aired a moderated view at the National Summit on Food, Nutrition, and Food Security organised by the House Committee on Nutrition and Food Security. His position was that ranching as a national policy would help address Nigeria’s growing food insecurity, while being opposed to open grazing.

Unfortunately, Mr President, hoodwinked by compelling economic reasons, you are tying the establishment of ranching in the six geopolitical zones as part of your renewed hope agenda. The idea of federal government involvement at the regional levels is more or less a booby trap to resuscitate the internal colonisation agenda, which the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), aka RUGA, was all about.

For the avoidance of doubt, Dr Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, unveiled the new plan dressed in the garb of a renewed hope agenda. The occasion was the Citizens-Government Engagement and Midterm Review hosted by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Foundation in Kaduna on July 29. In ways obvious, the Minister noted that the planned regional ranches are designed to transition Nigeria’s livestock industry from an open-grazing system to a modern mode and also to reduce violent clashes over land and water and strengthen the economic foundation of pastoral communities. The plan is so comprehensive that it involves collaboration among the Ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Water Resources, Livestock Development, and the Blue Economy.

Mr President, you are facilitating in one fell swoop what the Buhari administration tried to achieve in eight years and failed. The previous administration had sought under various guises to grab indigenous land for his kinsmen through RUGA and control of inland waterways, among others, and failed. Your current step is unconstitutional and a handover of self-determination autonomy to a state-nation that seeks to conquer and dominate a multi-ethnic nation.

Mr President, anyone can accuse Nigerians of anything, but for want of a solution to the farmer-herder crisis. It is important to note that Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the sage, had envisioned a two-way economy: let the south produce the hail, let the north supply the beef on air-conditioned containers through railway. Beyond that, some regions had created ranches for breeding special species of cattle and the accompanying dairy business. The current scheme of the central government is a case of the insertion of alien herders into other regions. Agriculture being a matter on the concurrent legislative list, some state governmens, such as Lagos and Delta, are developing their ranches for their population.

Nonetheless, cattle rearing is a private business. It is not the business of the central authorities in a federation to impose the building of ranches on the states under the guise of collaboration. It is obvious to those who can discern the ulterior motive in this matter that it is the realisation of RUGA by another means and should be resisted. Therefore, Mr President, I am advising against this scheme in the present form. Leave the state alone. I am not so sure that this is in the ten-year plan that Professor Attahiru Jega-led Presidential Livestock Reforms Implementation Committee recommended. The FG should merely provide the general guidelines for those who want to make cattle breeding their business and livelihood. Do not open old wounds.
Mr. President, ro’nu.Professor Akhaine is with the Department of
Political Science, Lagos State University.