Presidential monologue – Part 41

Good morning Mr President. I am refreshing your memory on the issue of the farmer-herder crisis, a euphemism for the landgrab project of the hegemonic Fulani elite to inflict internal colonisation on the indigenous peoples of Nigeria. You seem eager to solve the problem on the presumption that the conflict is a farmer-herder one and have started implementing with a great deal of naivety, perhaps informed by the feeling that you are doing the nation well.

Mr President, you seemed to have forgotten the words of Chief Ayo Adebanjo on the farmer-herder question in his correspondence to you titled “The Insanities on the Plateau: The Buck Stops with You.” He opined that: “The excuse that the killings are a result of Farmer/Herders conflict is not only deceptive, but it is fact challenged.

There is no conflict where one side continues to attack and kill innocent people, where one side is fully armed, while the other side is disarmed by Government. What we see today and continuously, are the activities of Terrorists who have repeatedly claimed responsibility for their actions and have stated unequivocally their desire for transfer of Lands to their relatives. We have even witnessed the ignominy of a presidential spokesman, advising victims to give up their ancestral lands for peace with these marauders.

We are informed by our fellow citizens on the Plateau of the many villages displaced and occupied and of the many families killed and displaced. The killers are taking the land of their victims, and the government is looking the other way. This cannot be allowed to continue.”

Nevertheless, indeed, you created the Ministry of Livestock Development. To ignore the latent function of the livestock question is a policy misstep. The recommendation that came out from the Ganduje stakeholder conference on the farmer-herder question of early 2023, ignored the alternative recommendation of expansion of the scope of existing Departments of Livestock Production to address the broader needs of the industry. Even the decision blatantly ignored an extant policy direction to implement the Oronsaye report on the rationalisation of federal government bureaucracy.

On Monday, March 11 in the commencement ceremonials of Niger State’s food security and agricultural mechanisation programme, you made the Freudian slip that you would solve the farmer-herder crisis in three weeks. As I said when I first addressed this issue in my weekly advisory to you, the focus ought to have been to encourage subnational governments to “focus on the deployment of technology for large-scale agro-value chain development” and avoid an area in which both the south and the Middle belt has done substantial push-back. 

Without a doubt, the ulterior motive for the creation of cattle ranching/grazing settlements across the country is a land grab by a state-nation that is desirous of imposing its preferences on the rest of the country. Some have even identified it as “stealth Jihad” which the rest of the country is ready to resist.

In the early days of the Buhari administration, there was a deliberate incursion, or exodus, into the south and the Middle belt prompting the enactment of sundry anti-grazing laws in many states. The trespassers were goaded by the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) initiative of the central government. The apprehension had yet to die down, so the Buhari administration responded with the so-called National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), which aims to address the farmer-herder conflict by settling herders into ranches, a substitute for the controversial RUGA in 2019.

The administration had gone ahead with the project in Kotongora, Niger State, where it had acquired a 31,000-hectare piece of land. A replication of this across the country without resistance would have meant the take-over by the Fulani.

On the heels of RUGA and NLTP came the Water Resources Bill in the 9th National Assembly ostensibly to provide a “Regulatory Framework for the Water Resources Sector in Nigeria; Provide for the Equitable and Sustainable Redevelopment, Management; Use and Conservation of Nigeria’s Surface Water and Ground Water Resources and for Related Matter.”

The Bill also read in part that “The right to the use, management and control of all surface water and ground water affecting more than one state pursuant to Item 64 of the Exclusive Legislative list in Part one of the Second Schedule to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended, and as set out in the First Schedule to this Act, together with the beds and banks, is vested in the Government of the Federation to be exercised in accordance with the provisions of this Act.”  The discontent was such that a wary public stood up to resist. For example, Section 2(1) of the Bill states that “All surface water and groundwater, wherever it occurs, is a resource common to all people.’’
 
The Presidential livestock reforms Implementation Committee set up by your administration has recommended the adoption of both ranching and open grazing, at least in the short term, to halt the recurring clashes between farmers and pastoralists across the country. This cautious statement does blur the discontent. Simultaneously, your administration has announced the so-called Pulaaku Initiative, “a largescale resettlement programme to address the causes of clashes between farmers and herders in various flashpoints nationwide” in seven states that include Sokoto, Kebbi, Benue, Katsina, Zamfara, Niger, and Kaduna states.

According to the programme, Houses, Schools, Hospitals, and other basic amenities will be provided for the Fulani herdsmen. Pulaaku also called the “Fulani code of conduct,” is a holistic Fulani value system that is both ethical and cultural. It is a continuation of RUGA policy by other means. As some analysts have noted, it is nothing other than a recipe for disaster.

The Nigerian Fulani belong to some states of the country; let those subnational governments address the problem of IPDs and nomadism with the assistance of the central government. The creation of enclaves in states where the rehabilitees do not belong should be out of the question. To do so is swamping and aiding the take-over of the country by the Fulani.
Akhaine is a Professor of Political Science at the Lagos State University. This column will go on recess for a month.