Sv: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Pastoralism

​You are not only quoting me out of context, but also drawing conclusions that I did not intend. In your contribution to No Hate Speech dialogue on this forum, 9 July 2019, you posted what you dubbed as Partial Timeline: Declarations of Responsibility for and Justification of Massacres in Nigeria by Right Wing Fulani Groups. You were silent on my response to you on assuming that your so-called right wing Fulani groups had admitted responsibility for and justified massacring Nigerians. Based on the contents of your Partial Timeline I was able to expose you of committing what in latin is called ignoratio elenchi. Your Partial Timeline contained Online News Proof of 6 May 2016 whose contents on Nimbo massacre in the Southeast was culled from New Telegraph of the same day. Online Leader News of 14 May 2016 also culled New Telegraph's interview on Nimbo massacre. While the Leader News titled the culled interview on Nimbo as I Tried to Stop Nimbo Massacre- Says Fulani in South-East, News Proof titled its own, Why My People Massacre Ukpabi-Nimbo People In Enugu - Fulani Herdsmen Leader Reveals Top Secrets. The headline of the News Proof must have had a great influence on your belief that the Fulani leader in the Southeast had admitted that his Fulani people perpetrated the massacre at Nimbo in Enugu State. If you have had the patience of reading through the whole interview, you would have discovered that the interviewee declared that he only heard the rumour of impending attack but he did not know who carried out the attack. However he added that if the attack was carried out by Fulani herdsmen, it would have been in retaliation for murdered Fulani herdsmen in Nimbo community. The Leader News introduced the interviewee thus, Alhaji Ardo Saidu Baso is the leader of the Fulani Community in the South-East and Deputy leader of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeder's Association, South East chapter. When asked, "So what is causing this problem between farmers and Fulani herdsmen? The Fulani leader, Alhaji Baso denied that there were any fightings between herdsmen and farmers. Rather, he said that the fightings have been between organised youths who trailed the paths of the herders and their herds in the bush and hunting cows as if they were hunting wild animals. After the youths had killed cows, they share the meat for sales. He then asked the interviewer, ''Is that not stealing?'' He narrated further that the Fulani herdsmen in Enugu had always obtained the permission and directive of the Community, Igwe, about which area in wild-bush they could graze their cattle. He stated that in past the arrangement functioned peacefully as no youth dared to flout the authority of Igwe. From personal experience of Alhaji Baso, the youths nowadays have outgrown the power of Igwe because after obtaining permission and directives of where to grace cattle, the youths always come behind to ask herdsmen to pay for grazing their cattle. The amount of money they charge and collect ranges between N100,000 and N300,000. Refusal to pay often results to fights including lost of human and cattle's lives. Lastly, the Leader News quoted Alhaji Ardo Saidu Baso as having said, "I have stayed 34 years now in Enugu State, even though I'm from Katsina State. Anybody who fights Enugu State people is fighting me. I don't have any other place to go, its Enugu State that I have my family, my children, everything, how will I like the people fighting Enugu people." The situation and experience of Alhaji Baso in Enugu is shared by all permanent resident Fulani  throughout Nigeria. The conflict which is erroneously presented to Nigerians as farmers/herdsmen is more or less a conflict between cow-rustlers/extortioners and herders. In the past, herdsmen could graze their cattle in wild growing fields and bushes without anyone demanding payments. In the 50s to early 60s, herders were allowed to graze their herds on schools' field and compounds and pupils and students welcomed them because they were liberated from cutting grasses in the school yard. In fact, the excreta released by cattle were collected as fertilizers for use in the school farm. Time, now, has changed and herdsmen whom in those good old-days could watch and guide their herds with a stick are now forced to carry gun to defend their flock and protect their lives from rustlers extortioners. Nomadic pastoralism is primitive, inhuman, and dangerous to practise. Nomadic pastoralism is not limited to cross-border and seasonal nomads but those who like Baso have resided in their place of abode for decades and still have to roam around to get grazing sites where armed rustlers/extortionists in the garment of livestock guards and vigilante groups are awaiting them. The solution to the problem confronting livestock or animal husbandry farmers is ranching as enshrined in NLTP approved by NEC containing all the 36 State Governors in Nigeria under the Chairmanship of Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo. Your so-called Southern Nigeria position on modernisation of livestock and animal husbandry farming is about RUGA and not NLTP which they have approved as members of NEC. Even the technical committee that was set up to enquire and report on the implementation of NTLP was chaired by a Southerner and Governor of Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi.

S. Kadiri      

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Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 14 juli 2019 03:03
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Pastoralism

 

Well said-

"While it will be unconstitutional for any State in Nigeria to stop transportation of cattle, from the North, in trailers or locomotive wagons because it will amount to obstruction of internal trade, it can never be constitutional to match thousands of cattle from the North by foot through cultivated farms and forest in the South."

That is the position of Southern Nigeria.

  This group of Fulani herdsmen are not described as constituting a problem:

"In all the thirty-six States of Nigeria there are settled Fulani cattle breeders who have resided in their respective communities for decades. "

This same group have not described themselves as needing help from the government. The various Fulani herdsmen inspired schemes- RUGA/ National Livestock/Cattle Colonies/Grazing Routes plans, which applied outside the Muslim North concentrations of the Fulani herdsmen would represent cheating local people of their land rights, are not inspired by nor targeted at settled Fulani herdsmen.

They are targeted at those nomadic herdsmen who appear on people's farms pillaging crops, killing,  amputating and raping, actions that cannot be taken by those settled in a community. The same engaged in systematic massacre and land occupation in the Middle Belt

No, thank you- 

 

"In all the thirty-six States of Nigeria there are settled Fulani cattle breeders who have resided in their respective communities for decades. These are the groups of Fulani herdsmen that should be targeted for ranching benefits."

Anything that will escalate further concentrations of Fulani herdsmen, potential ground for politicization by such warlords as Miyetti Allah and potential locations for infiltration by  nomadic Fulani herdsmen and the terrorism they have brought to the Middle Belt and the South East as well as the sporadic but recurrent kidnapping and brigandage they have brought to the rest of the country, must be resisted.

All Fulani herdsmen schemes should be restricted to the Muslim North. The govt should help them roll back desertification. They should be encouraged to trade weapons for money.

Any effort to create govt empowered constituencies of Fulani herdsmen outside their Muslim North concentration is recipe for disaster and eventual conflict.

toyin

On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 at 23:14, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:

​As the Yoruba people say, tragedy for a person is to be prevented from attaining a desired goal but the most poignant tragedy for a person is to get to a desired goal and find it empty. Similarly, the most poignant tragedy for Nigerians is that every time we diagnose the ailments afflicting our nation and prescribe known cures, educated Nigerian public officials who are employed (and well overpaid when compared with the general purchasing power of individual in the country) and assigned the duty of procuring drugs for the nation always supply us with fake drugs. The substitution of NLTP with RUGA is the usual application of fake drugs to the ailment of Nigeria by corrupt and conscienceless public servants. In 1976, it was Olusegun Obasanjo's military regime that introduced Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) and the national television showed him hacking  earth into heaps with his hoe to plant cassava and yams. When Shehu Shagari, became civilian president in 1979, he said that Nigeria would start developing from the stage where the Western technology was, especially in agriculture in which Nigeria had abundants of Western educated bureaucrats and technocrats. Therefore, his government embarked on Operation Green Revolution (OGR). In the beginning the cost of postals an advertisements took three-quarters or 75% of the budget of Operation Green Revolution. The rest 25% produced soil erosions as humans and animals were buried alive at Bakolori damn. Nigerian ports were blocked with ships loaded with fertilizers for the Nigerian farmers. While Nigeria was paying heavily for demurrage, off-loaded sacks of fertilizers were being washed away by rain in the open-sky where the government stored them in expectation that the local farmers would request for them. As public officials became stupidly rich as fertilizer importers and local farmers could not meet market demand of food supplies in Nigeria importation of rice became the order of the day. When journalists asked the responsible Minister in the government of President Shagari, Umaru Dikko, if he did not see hunger in the country? He answered rhetorically and asked if the journalists had ever seen Nigerians searching for food inside the dustbin. Umaru Dikko became chief importer of rice in Nigeria and the impunity with which public officials in the Shagari's government appropriated public funds to themselves led General Muhammadu Buhari to overthrow a fellow Fulani led government at the end of December 1983. General Buhari with his war on social and economic indiscipline led to his botched attempt to abduct Umaru Dikko with a crate from London where he was granted sanctuary by the British government who condoned his six billion pounds sterling theft in Nigeria.

​It is​ an irony of fate, that the same Buhari who tried to reprimand fake agriculturists in 1984, is today being duped with fake Rural Grazing Area, RUGA in 2019. Professor Jibrin Ibrahim will definitely object to my expression *fake RUGA* since he wrote that '… the Federal Government suspended its ''Ruga'' policy for the sedentariness of pastoralists following a massive campaign against it. It was uninformed because there was no discussion of the policy content that they were against.' The truth as it has now been disclosed is that the Federal Government has never had *RUGA policy* but National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP 2018-2028). When the news of RUGA was broken by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Mohammadu Umar, the General Secretary of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN), Baba Uthman Ngelzarma, being privy to the plan told Nigerians that, "This Ruga settlement model is a component part of the  National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) that is being implemented under the office of the Vice President." Garba Shehu, the Presidential spokesman  confirmed RUGA as being part of the NLTP. The Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo denied any knowledge of RUGA much less supervising it. The VP office said that the RUGA initiative is different from the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) approved by 36 state Governors of the Federation under the auspices of the National Economic Council (NEC), chaired by VP Osinbajo. The NEC had set up a Technical Committee to look into how to implement NTLP. The Technical Committee was chaired by Governor of Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi while other members were Governors of Adamawa, Kaduna, Benue, Taraba, Edo, Plateau, Oyo and Zamfara. Subsequent recommendations from the Technical Committee on NLTP was approved by NEC on 17 January 2019. Consequently, on 13 March 2019, a letter was from the Vice President's Office was addressed to AKU Uka of Wukari in Taraba State, introducing one Dr Kyantirimam Ukwen as the person to conduct mapping assessment in Taraba State as a part of federal government's strategy to tackle farmer-herder crises in the State. What happened next was that the Director of Procurement, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Hussain Adamu, wrote a letter to an Abuja contractor dated 21 May 2019 stating, "I am directed to inform you that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its meeting held on 8th May 2019, approved the award of contract for the construction of 8 Nos Ruga infrastructure with Sanitary Facilities (Red Brick Structure) each in Taraba State as detailed in the attached to your company at the sum of N 166,336,380.00 (One-hundred and sixty-six million, three-hundred and thirty-six thousand, three-hundred and eighty naira only). The online Premium Times from where the above information is extracted did not give the name of the contractor and on whose behalf the letter was signed. Certainly, the letter could not have been signed on behalf of the Federal Executive Council, the supposed awarder of the contract, by a Director from Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Whenever FEC awards contract, it used to inform the press after its usual Wednesdays' meeting. No such information was conveyed to the media after the FEC's meeting of 8 May 2019. Ruga was a ruse cooked up by public servants in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and designed to fleece Nigerian government and its beneficiaries, in this case the pastoralists, of a huge sum of money that could have gone into ranching as intended in the NLTP.  Nigerians of all strata have agreed that it is primitive with nomadic pastoralism in the 21st century and that culture should be replaced with ranches. Why should public officials be allowed to introduce ethnicity into the process with the aim of pilfering funds to be set aside for ranches and side-lining the Vice-President,Yemi Osinbajo, who the President hade delegated the duty of presiding over NEC and NTLP to?

​At the end of your article, you wrote, "Finally, let us not forget that we have a Constitutional principle on free moment of persons and goods in Nigeria and we cannot and should not legislate millions of people out of their business and livelihoods. You backed up the aforesaid thus, "In Section 41(1) of the Nigerian Constitution, it is stated that: Every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and reside in any part thereof, and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereby or exit there from." Stating your reasons for citing the Constitution, you wrote, "Some States have enacted laws to prevent open grazing on their territory. As everyone says animal husbandry is business, we should be careful that others do not follow the tactic of preventing the other from running their business where they are not indigenes." Although you stated in your reference to  Constitutional principle that it allows free movement of persons and goods in Nigeria, Section41(1) that you cited only entitled citizens to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof. It is obvious that you have smuggled free movement of goods into that part of the constitution in order to embrace cattle. While it will be unconstitutional for any State in Nigeria to stop transportation of cattle, from the North, in trailers or locomotive wagons because it will amount to obstruction of internal trade, it can never be constitutional to match thousands of cattle from the North by foot through cultivated farms and forest in the South. In all the thirty-six States of Nigeria there are settled Fulani cattle breeders who have resided in their respective communities for decades. These are the groups of Fulani herdsmen that should be targeted for ranching benefits. Nigerian government should take responsibility for Nigerian Fulani and their cattle and not immigrating Mali, Senegal and Guinea Fulani and their cattle. President Buhari once said that foreign herdsmen are the ones causing problems with Nigerian farmers. Open grazing must be abolished simultaneously as ranches are established through government's subsidy.

S. Kadiri           

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Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 12 juli 2019 01:03
Till: 'chidi opara reports' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Pastoralism

 

The Crisis of Pastoralism and Negative Stereotyping: From Cattle Colonies to Ruga

 

Jibrin Ibrahim, Friday Column, Daily Trust, 12^thJuly 2019

 

Last week, the Federal Government suspended its "Ruga" policy for the sedentarisation of pastoralists following a massive and successful but uninformed campaign against it. It was uninformed because there was no discussion of the policy content that they were against. The thrust of the campaign was that ruga was a Fulani word and settling them means land would be taken from people and given to them. The same thing had happened two years previously when a similar policy package was launched with another emotionally evocative word – cattle "colony". Again, it was impossible to discuss the policy content because the word "colony" feed directly into another effective campaign popularised through a conspiracy theory that there was an on-going Jihad to colonise the land belonging to Christians in the Middle Belt and that the establishment of cattle colonies was the practical policy tool for implementing the said Jihad. Essentially, it has become extremely difficult to have a rational discussion on the crisis of pastoralism in Nigeria and pathways to a solution. 

 

I have seen the policy documents from the Ministry of Agriculture and the documents themselves did not talk about colonies or ruga. What happened was that both times, just when the policies were being launched, the names - colony and ruga were added making the discussions of the policy content impossible. The fact that this happened twice in two years means it was not a mistake. Some people in the Ministry must have decided that an emotionally evocative name would kill the policy before it takes off and they have been very successful. Names matter when emotions are already very high. Policy makers of course know that difficult policies need to be sold to stakeholders through enlightenment campaigns and that people's concerns must be addressed. It's interesting that this policy package which is the most difficult in recent years is simply leaked out through one mischievous word and is killed on arrival. The result has been that those who called for ranching during the open grazing phase of the debate are the ones that are today condemning ranching which is the content of the policy package.

 

The policy package itself is called the National Livestock Transformation Plan 2018-2017 whose objective was "to transform pastoralism into ranching" in 12 Northern States that have volunteered to provide land for the project. During the discussions with State Governments, the Federal Government reduced the numbers from 12 to 7 States for budgetary reasons but the 12 States subsequently agreed to go ahead with their own resources to accelerate the take-off of the Plan.

 

Earlier this year, I had attended a policy briefing on the project where Ministry of Agriculture officials announced they had renamed the project "Ruga Model Settlements" to get the buy in of the pastoralists who are used to the term. They explained that each State would have eight settlements that would have provision of one hectare of grazing land per cow carved out of grazing reserves, veterinary services to improve the breed and productivity of the herd, bore holes, schools and cattle markets. It was a modest programme that would lead to the sedentarisation of a few hundred thousand cows over ten years while we have 20 million cows currently engaged in open grazing in the country. I reminded the officials the disaster caused by the term Cattle colony and strongly advised that they revert to the proper name – National Livestock Transformation Plan but my advice was obviously ignored. 

 

In objecting to the scheme, people have expressed the concern that their land would be seized for the project. There is no basis for this because land is constitutionally controlled by State governments and the Federal Government cannot simply take peoples land. The other concern I have heard a lot of is that animal husbandry is a private business so government resources should not be invested. Many of those making this argument are currently enjoying Federal Government resources for farming under the Anchor Borrowers' Programme supported by the Central Bank. Clearly, the problem cannot be that government has no role to play, the issue is the target group.

 

The underlying problem is that pastoralists-farmers' conflicts in Nigeria have grown, spread and intensified over the past decade and today poses a threat to national survival.Thousands of people have been killed, communities have been destroyed and so many farmers and pastoralists have lost their lives and property in an orgy of killings and destruction that is not only destroying livelihoods but also affecting national cohesion. Meanwhile, the farmer-herder conflicts have transformed into rural banditry and criminal gangs have taken over and are killing, kidnapping and extorting farmers, pastoralists and road users. If we need a resolution, we must acknowledge that for yearsthe scale of loss of both herds and human life has been escalating and the victims are on all sides – subsistence farmers, commercial farmers and pastoralists. Growing criminality cannot be an excuse to refuse a solution to the problem that was originally one of the crises of pastoralism.

 

Nigeria has a large pastoral population of millions tending about 20 million cows.Pastoralism is a historically developed strategy to cope with the uncertainties associated with climate change and is an efficient way to produce livestock at relatively low prices through the use of non-commercial feeding stock. Historically, pastoralists have been able to meet the meat demand in West Africa with a relatively high level of efficiency without government subsidy for generations. So, keeping government out would require fixing the problems that caused the crisis of pastoralism. 

Nigeria has a landmass of 98.3 million hectares, 82 million hectares of arable land of which about 34 million hectares are currently under cultivation. The problem we have is one of governance. Nigeria's population has grown from 33 million in 1950 to about 192.3 million today. This phenomenal increase of the population has put enormous pressure on land and water resources used by farmers and pastoralists.In the far north, the impact of desertification as well as the crisis of energy, which has resulted in deforestation, coupled with climatic uncertainty and lower rainfall have made it more difficult to sustain increasing populations, pushing many farmers and pastoralists with livestock southwards. This has happened gradually over a period of decades – with an apparent increase over the past decade – and has added to pressure on land and water in central and southern Nigeria.

One of the outcomes of this process has been the blockage of transhumance routes and loss of grazing land to agricultural expansion and the increased southward movement of pastoralists has led to increased conflict with local communities. This is particularly the case in the Middle Belt – notably in Plateau, Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa, Benue, Taraba, and Adamawa States. The conflicts often have localised dynamics, but primarily involve Fulani pastoralists and local farming communities.

 

These conflicts were not being addressed as they arose because the Nigerian state has a relatively weak rural presence and has neglected the agrarian sector since the 1970s, when oil revenues began to dominate the economy.State response in the context of the lingering conflicts between farmers and pastoralists has been both ad hoc and reactive, with no concrete and sustainable strategies for conflict management and peace building.

 

The greatest concern is that popular narratives creating meaning, context and (mis)understandings that have been emerging are fuelling the crisis. The narratives emerging in popular discourse encompass a lot of hate speech and are becoming part of the drivers for expanding conflicts in the country. The protagonists in this saga are often presented as being Muslim "herders" attacking and killing Christian farmers with intent to take their land. The emerging discourses of negative stereotyping, increasingly formulated by certain professors and intellectuals, are essentialist, bigoted and designed to promote and sustain suspicion, distrust and fuel hatred and more violence. 

 

Nigeria urgently needs to find pathways to get out of the crisis and the best approach has been on the table since 1965 - the development of grazing reserves for pastoralists. Grazing reserves are areas of land demarcated, set aside and reserved for exclusive or semi-exclusive use by pastoralists. Currently, Nigeria has a total of 417 grazing reserves, most of them in the North which could be used for both sedentarisation of pastoralists as well as open restricted grazing and we should work out how to use them.

 

Finally, let us not forget that we have a constitutional principle on free movement of persons and goods in Nigeria and we cannot and should not legislate millions of people out of their business and livelihoods. InSection 41(1) of the Nigerian Constitution, it is stated that:

 

''Every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof, and no citizen of Nigeria shall be expelled from Nigeria or refused entry thereby or exit therefrom.''

 

Some States have enacted laws to prevent open grazing on their territory. As everyone says animal husbandry is a business, we should be careful that others do not follow the tactic of preventing the other from running their business where they are not indigenes.

 

 

 

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim

Senior Fellow

Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja

Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17

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