In the last six years of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government, one of the narratives a lot of people, particularly his former supporters and apologists, often attempt to sell to the people when they find the things that happen on his watch unfathomable is that the president is not aware of those developments.
The president’s former Chief of Staff, the late Abba Kyari and his relation, Mamman Daura are some of the names that were often bandied as leaders of the cabal in control of what happens in the Presidency.
His media handlers, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, have also often taken the flak for allegedly airing their opinions and not those of the president.
I have never found that explanation plausible and have maintained at every point that the president is fully aware and in charge.
My argument has always been that he has been demystified to the extent that those who thought he was the best thing that never happened to Nigeria until he won the election in 2015, have since realised that he is not all that.
Well, for those who were still doubtful that the president was fully in charge and in control of his government, and aware of goings-on around him, if last week’s interviews with Arise News and state-owned Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) didn’t clear their doubt, nothing else will.
Those interviews were all the confirmation needed and one of those who interviewed the president on the Arise News team, Reuben Abati, alluded to this in a recent article.
Expectedly, the interview has elicited mixed reactions from the people and as usual, divided them along regional lines, that is North and South.
This is partly the fault of the president.
Rather than speak in a way that assuages the feelings of all Nigerians, the president, showed sympathy and support for the Fulani ethnic stock on the issue of itinerant cattle rearing without showing the same measure of concern for agitations by other ethnic nationalities in the country.
Whereas the president dismissed the agitations by the people of the South Eastern part of the country and referred to them as a dot in the Nigerian circle, who have nowhere to go because of their presence in every part of the country and their investments there, the reason for which he should show genuine concern about their agitations and be interested in seeing to it that the issues raised and their feelings and misgivings, genuine or imagined, are addressed, he reiterated the resolve of the federal government to return to the era of grazing routes of the First Republic, an idea that nearly everyone is unanimous is no longer in tandem with current reality.
President Buhari had while fielding questions in the interview, said he had given approval for the return of open grazing where herdsmen used designated grazing routes to move cross country with their cattle. He said he had directed the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to begin the process of recovering lands designated as grazing routes from those who had encroached and converted same to personal use.
The president tried to rationalise the directive thus: “…If you allow your cattle to stray into any farm, you are arrested. The farmer is invited to submit his claims. The Khadi or the judge will say pay this amount and if you can’t the cattle is sold. And if there is any benefit, you are given and people were behaving themselves and in the grazing areas, they built dams, put windmills in some places there were even veterinary departments so that the herders are limited. Their route is known, their grazing area is known. So, I asked for the gazette to make sure that those who encroached on these cattle routes and grazing areas will be dispossessed in law and try to bring some order back into the cattle grazing.”
Is the president not aware that all Southern states and some in the North-Central, as well as stakeholders, including the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN), which until recently was opposed to open grazing, saying it would alter the itinerant nature and culture of the herders, are all in agreement that itinerant cattle grazing is no longer realistic and should be replaced with ranching? Is he not aware that some states have laws that prohibit open grazing and that those laws subsist?
In January 2021, governors, under the aegis of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) and MACBAN, in a communiqué at the end of a meeting in Akure, Ondo State, agreed to ban open grazing, underage and night herding and the illegal occupation of forest reserves in states.
Also, in May 2021, governors of 17 states in the South resolved to ban open grazing of cattle in their states after a meeting in Asaba, the Delta State capital.
On the heels of the Asaba meeting, MACBAN also endorsed the position of Southern Governors on the ban of open grazing. The National Patron of MACBAN, Senator Walid Jibrin, said the ban appeared like the elixir needed to solve the age-long farmers-herders crisis.
While pointing out as known to nearly everyone with more than a passing interest on the subject that cattle rearing has been going on in Africa for over 100 years without any consideration to free movement of cattle (Open Grazing) or any Grazing Reserve, he said this was carried out in the past because there were few herders, farmers and cattle, especially in Nigeria.
Jibrin, who is also the Sarkin Fulani Nasarawa, said, with the current concern on cattle rearing in Africa especially Nigeria, there is need to look at how best this practice will be carried out successfully, particularly in view of the population increase with modern techniques of farming consuming land tremendously.
This is absolutely correct.
A popular African adage says if the witch cried at night and the baby died in the morning, need we ask who killed the baby?
When AGF Malami likened open cattle grazing in the South to trading in spare parts in the North and many searched for the nexus between the two, without finding one, the President, in his interviews, provided it with his position on the issue.
The president singled out and accused Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, of not being fair to him and of accusing him of failing to take action against the herdsmen because he is one of them. The president agrees that he is Fulani and cannot deny the fact. He, however, said he had told Ortom that the herdsmen perpetrating the attacks are not the Nigerian Fulani.
Let us agree that the perpetrators of the acts for which open grazing prohibition laws have been put in place across the states are not Nigerians. MACBAN, umbrella body of cattle rearers are ready to ranch their cattle in tandem with modern farm practices. What then is this fixation with open grazing and return to grazing routes by the president?
