It is becoming clearer by the day that Mansur Dan Ali, Nigeria’s minister of defence’s adamant stand on the anti open-grazing law in operation in some states of the federation is the official government stand, as unfortunate as it is. If this were not so, the presidency would have said otherwise. And if you think President Muhammadu Buhari may have made a mistake in the kind of people he appointed to high offices, you had better think again.
Dan Ali had, at the end of a National Security Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Tuesday, called on states operating the anti-grazing law, especially Benue and Taraba, to suspend it as a way of stemming the tide of the bloodletting by Fulani herdsmen.
“There is need to employ other channels with the affected states to reduce tension by suspending the implementation of the anti-open grazing law while also negotiating safe routes for the herders,” Dan Ali was quoted as saying.
The minister also reportedly spoke about the urgent need to hasten the establishment of a National Commission on the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Nigeria and for the Nigeria Police and Department of State Services (DSS) to prosecute all the suspects arrested in states.
The call by the minister could have been pardoned as a slip of tongue if it were a one-off. But no, it was not the first time such a statement had come from the minister or some other top-ranking officials of the Buhari government.
In January, at the end of yet another meeting of the National Security Council presided over by Buhari, Dan Ali had blamed the killings, especially in Benue and Taraba States, on the anti-grazing law as well as blockage of grazing routes across the country.
“Since the nation’s independence, we know there used to be a route whereby the cattle rearers take because they are all over the nation. If you go to Bayelsa or Ogun, you will see them. If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen?” Dan Ali had said. “These people are Nigerians. It is just like one going to block the shoreline. Does that make sense to you? These are the remote causes of the crisis. But the immediate cause is the grazing law.”
That such statement has usually come at the end of a National Security Council meeting presided over and dominated by Nigerians of a certain ethnic stock and religion says a lot about the kind of deliberations that go on in there. But that’s by the way.
To further confirm that it is official, Ibrahim Idris, Inspector General of Police, another member of the National Security Council, in February reportedly told the Senate Committee on Police Affairs that the anti-open grazing law implemented by the Benue State government was to blame for the attacks in the state, particularly the ones that claimed about 73 lives in Logo and Guma Local Government Areas early in 2018. Idris, according to reports, had specifically asked for suspension of the law until ranches were provided, then the law could be gradually implemented again.
Many Nigerians have described such utterances as tragic, insensitive, careless, arrogant and pathetic. Various interpretations have also emerged. One analyst said the minister’s statement simply justified the killings and emboldened the herders, much like saying to them, ‘If you don’t like a law, don’t only disobey it, but go and kill people in revenge’. Another said it implies that any state which chooses to pass any law deemed offensive to the nomadic lifestyle of the herdsmen should be ready to bear the consequences. Yet another said it also means that except other Nigerians agree to the terms and conditions of coexistence as articulated by the Fulani, there would be no peace in Nigeria.
Going by these, one could then see in all of this an attempt by the Federal Government and its agents to blackmail the states into submission, much like the failed Grazing Reserve Bill and the bid to force cattle colonies down the throats of the states. It is like saying to the states: suspend the anti-grazing law or continue to die in the hands of Fulani herdsmen. Long before now, Opeyemi Agbaje, a Lagos-based public affair analyst, had opined that the government’s strategy on the herdsmen issue “appears to resemble official blackmail and terrorism – ‘agree to provide grazing routes for the herdsmen through your areas, or they will continue to kill you!’
Incidentally, the statements by the defence minister and the IGP tally with the official stand of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), an umbrella body of cattle herders in the country. Despite the constantly changing narratives by the presidency and its officials as to whether those perpetrating the dastardly killings are Fulani herdsmen, the Islamic State of West Africa (ISWA), foreigners or remnants of armed bandits from Muammar Gadaffi’s Libya, MACBAN has consistently demanded the abrogation of the anti-grazing law.
But in a motion under Matters of Urgent Public Importance during the House of Representatives plenary on Wednesday, John Dyegh (APC-Benue) reaffirmed the rights of states under the 1999 Constitution to make laws for the good governance of their domain.
“This is not the only state that has made laws for good governance in it. For instance, we have seen states making laws against trading in alcohol and prostitution and such laws are obeyed by visitors and indigenes alike without interference by Federal Government,” Dyegh said.
Also reacting to Dan Ali’s utterance in January, Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State offered what is perhaps so far the best argument to deflate the puerile attribution of the killer herdsmen invasion to the enactment of anti-open grazing laws.
“If you say it is because of the law that killings by herdsmen are going on in Benue, is there any law prohibiting open grazing in Adamawa State? Is there any one in Plateau State? Is there any law in Kaduna, Ondo, Bayelsa, Imo, Ebonyi, Delta or Edo State? In Edo State, cattle have taken over even schools,” Ortom had said in response to the minister’s statement.
Ortom was right. The minister’s statement contradicts the reality on ground, which is that these atrocities by the herdsmen – rape, large-scale destruction of houses and farmlands, and killing and maiming of innocent citizens – had been going on long before some states thought up the anti-grazing law. There was no anti-grazing law in Benue when the Agatu massacre of 2016 happened. In fact, there had been more than 47 armed attacks by suspected Fulani terrorists on Benue State before the enactment of the anti-open grazing law, which only came into effect on November 1, 2017, according to Lawrence Onoja, the state commissioner for information and orientation.
There was no anti-grazing law in Enugu when the Nimbo killings happened in 2016. No such law exists in Ondo, Delta, Kwara, Ogun, Edo, Kebbi, Oyo and many other states where there have been reported killings by Fulani herdsmen. Olu Falae, a former presidential candidate, was once kidnapped and his farm in Ondo State has been a target of perennial attacks by herdsmen, even though there is no anti-grazing law in the state.
The anti-grazing law is currently operational in Benue, Taraba and Ekiti States, where clashes between herdsmen and farmers have led to the loss of thousands of lives and destruction of valuable property. In each case, the law was simply a reaction to the wanton killings.
Only a few days ago, it was reported that the Abia State House of Assembly has passed into law a bill to control nomadic cattle-rearing and prohibit grazing routes in the state. The report quoted the speaker, Chikwendu Kalu, as saying the law, meant to checkmate the worrisome activities of herdsmen who have been a major threat to lives, property and peace of the land, “stipulates that every cattle entering into the state must be registered at the entry point to the state and must be conveyed in a vehicle, failure of which would attract seizure of the cattle and severe sanctions”.
So, if the Federal Government were sincere and had the interest of all Nigerians, not just a section, at heart; if it were not tacitly endorsing “what looks like a strategy of terror and pillaging to achieve an expansionist and hegemonic ambition”, then it would not hesitate to embrace the ranching option, which is practiced worldwide and has been generally accepted, even by the National Economic Council, as the only way forward. And then it would come up with a law prohibiting open grazing. For, as Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State said in a series of tweets on Tuesday, this, indeed, is the time for the Federal Government to support cattle ranching, rather than subjecting these herders “to a life of following cows through the bush from Yobe to Lagos” – unless, of course, there is something “to this old system of nomadic cattle rearing that they are not telling Nigerians”.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
