Though I haven’t heard a single cattle expert or practitioner support the idea of enforcing ranching-by-fiat as Benue is trying to do, I will not hesitate to thank some Facebook advocates of the law who have been lecturing us on the approach as the answer to herdsmen-farmers clashes. Thank you all for the lectures.
The instant ranching advocates still have more work to do though. For example, they are yet to give us a breakdown of its cost. And there are other fundamental issues which the advocates have not addressed. One of them is land and the associated issue if its ownership.
If all the cattle in Nigeria are ranched, how much land will be left for expansion of agriculture?
Which guarantee exists that the farmer-populations, which cannot find more land to expand their farms to meet our explosive population, will not someday accuse the ranchers of occupying their lands even where the ranching lands were legitimately acquired?
Example: The Fulani have been ranching on Mambila Plateau for several decades, each herd has a demarcated area it grazes on legitimately acquired by the herd owner. The result is that one morning in 2017, after over 70 years of ranching, some of their farmer-neighbours ransacked the ranches and killed 827 herdsmen and their families under the pretext that they want more land for farming. The lucky ones escaped to neighbouring Cameroon.
In so many communities, the issues of land was used as a pretext to drive away undesired groups. In Plateau, in a widespread campaign of bloodbath, many Hausa and Fulani were expelled from their legitimate homes and farms in the countryside because they do not belong to the land. Not a single one of them can be found in 42 such communities today.
I am yet to hear a single instant-ranching advocate tell us where the herdsmen will acquire ranching land. None. Not even Governor Ortom. If government wants to further commerce, for example, it acquires land, builds markets and rent the shops to traders because it wants to regulate and promote business. It goes the whole hog to even give incentives to many businesses.
The herdsman does not deserve that care. He is expected to fly to Mars with his cows and establish ranches there or face bullets from government sponsored ethnic militia. Nigeria!
The truth is that ranching-by-fiat is used as a smokescreen for the execution of a sinister ethnic-religious project, the architects of which are not bold enough to make public.
Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
12 January 2018
12 January 2018
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