Herdsmen Will Outlive Fayose

Beef is taken for granted in Nigeria because it is always available. Just go to the market any day, you will get it in abundance. Yet, the people who sacrifice their entire life to produce it do not enjoy any subsidy in any way from government and others look at them with disdain, if not outright contempt.

People opposed to free range grazing and establishment of grazing reserves talk about ranching as the only solution. But ranching is practically impossible to our herders.

The average herd size in Nigeria is less than 40 cattle. At an average cost of N100,000 per cow, the entire family asset is therefore not more than N4 million. To make a ranch of 13 hectares that will host 40 cows, you need nothing less than N50 million according to a conservative estimate I prepared yesterday for a publication. So Nigeria is asking a citizen with a total asset of only N4million to transform himself overnight into a N50 million millionaire or get killed. 😳

You see, beef is like the maize, rice and cowpea we produce. These commodities are produced by millions of farmers with average farm size of far less than a hectare each. What do you think will happen if we ask all of them to abandon the tiny farms and adopt even a small scale mechanized farming, overnight, because they have conflict with herders?

I sometimes wonder how our elite think in this country.

Grazing reserves in each local government at least across parts of the North that are hospitable to herders is the best solution for now. But even that proposition is opposed by some people - that FG money - their money - must not be used to develop the reserves. Yet other forms of farming can enjoy FG patronage and subsidy: Rice, fish, pigs, cassava, etc. Not the cow because it is not Nigerian.

Meanwhile, most of the elite who attempted ranching failed woefully in this country. They thought there is money in bovineculture. To their harsh experience, they realized that government does not subsidize vet services and inputs, and no authority to ensure the security of lives and property on the farms. Even a serving Vice-President could not protect his farm from menacing rustlers in the Northwest.

We hardly appreciate that these barefooted, and comfort-denied herders are toiling hard, with their sweat and blood, to subsidize the beef on our table and the milk in our diet. The criminal activities of few Fulani are used to stigmatize herders collectively as if anyone has prevented government from carrying its duty to arrest the criminals. Or when just a cow strays, that becomes a reason to kill the herd and the herdsmen - and go to the press crying foul. The victim, who has no press behind him, becomes the culprit and branded a terrorist as soon as he retaliates after government has treated his complaint with indifference.

I wish our herdsmen will abandon these animals just to prove a point one day. Who said they cannot trade or
farm like others do and as many Fulani of other nations do across West and Central Africa? Let them sell off the cows and raise the capital for other enterprises. And Let Nigeria import meat with the tonnes of Dollars that It has. 😝

Of course they will not abandon the cattle overnight, not even the free range grazing. Even as increasing numbers of Fulani take to other sedentary enterprises as they have been doing for centuries
now, more for practical reasons than the stubbornness of their owners, cattle will continue to roam Africa, perhaps, for the next century or so, long after the demise any demented primate, as they outlived Sundiata and
Sanni Ali.

Fayose: 👊👊👊

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

27 May, 2016