Punch Opinion
Obsessed with outdated animal husbandry practices, the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), instigated fresh controversy on Thursday by declaring strong support for open cattle grazing. In a ghastly interview aired on Arise TV, Buhari adamantly rejected the ban that the governors of the 17 states in the South placed on open grazing in May. With a national stock of 20 million-plus cattle head, Buhari’s open cattle grazing scheme is a threat to settled farming communities across the country.
Demonstrating an uncommon passion for the contentious practice, the President said he would revive grazing routes throughout the country for cattle herders by dusting up a gazette of the First Republic. He argued that nomadism is the culture of the Fulani, not minding the wider implications of the primitive practice.
Buhari’s position is provocative and could further embolden the killer herders. It pits the President in direct conflict with the people in the South and their governors, where farming is the main occupation. Already, large swathes of the North-Central have become killing fields as herdsmen claiming a right to unfettered grazing everywhere are violently destroying lives, farms, and settlements.
To actualise his morbid ambition, Buhari says the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, will spearhead the resuscitation of the law. “What I did was ask him (the AGF) to go and dig the gazette of the First Republic when people were obeying laws,” the President said. “There were cattle routes and grazing areas. Cattle routes were for when they (herdsmen) are moving upcountry, North to South or East to West, they had to go through there. 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 are sold.” Certainly, the President places cultural practice over the constitution of the land.
Buhari should simply perish the thought. The Nigeria of the 1960s is not the Nigeria of today. What is particularly galling in the interview is that Buhari canvassed the same sense of entitlement to other ethnic nationalities’ land as the killer herders. It is simplistic and dangerous for the President to anchor his pet ethnic project on a colonial law that is better forgotten. To the average person in the South, North-Central and even North-Western states like Kebbi and Kaduna, open cattle grazing has become impracticable, particularly because it is a source of farmland destruction, rape, kidnapping, violence, and geographical hegemony by the herders.
Globally, open grazing has been replaced by pragmatism: ranching, undertaken as a private business. This does not appeal to Buhari in any way. And it is tragic as it may worsen an already explosive situation.
Buhari’s idea is not feasible, going by the law. Since its promulgation in 1978, the Land Use Act has vested all land as trust in state governors. For now, governors hold land for their people. Governors of the South and North-Central states must protect the lives and livelihoods of their people at all costs by strictly enforcing the ban on open cattle grazing. All validly made laws should be enforced. Strikingly, in the same interview, the President has equally challenged the governors to maintain law and order in their domains.
Buhari ought to get real. Open grazing belongs to the distant past of Nigeria’s history. At the level of the President, he ought to promote modern solutions to divisive issues like nomadism. It does not serve anybody’s interest, but provokes ethnic strife and food insecurity, and is a pretext for the chronic violence buffeting the country.
The President should do things methodically. The logical thing then for Buhari is to learn how other similarly challenged countries substituted their culture of open grazing for ranching.
By campaigning for open herding, Buhari is about to set the country on fire. He certainly does not need that as part of his doubtable legacy. Without getting emotional, Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, eradicated open grazing though it was the culture there. Simply, any retrogressive culture should give way to a modern, inclusive alternative. This is a better way out.
Buhari is walking dangerously on eggshells around him. His regime is too immersed in ethnic politics and animal husbandry. Cattle rearing is a private business, nothing more than trading or farming. Buhari should decouple his regime from a sense of cultural hegemony.