BACKGROUND: There is a Bill before the
Nigerian National Assembly that has successfully scaled through second reading
in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, which deserves very close
scrutiny by all Nigerians. The international community should also be interested
in this Bill because of the magnitude of the internal crises that the Bill
could create with attendant spill-over effects if passed. All that is left in
the legislative process to make it a law is 3rd Reading, that is, a
clause by clause debate and then assent by the President. As explained below, the
proposed piece of legislation is full of unconstitutionalities, ethnic
discriminations, fundamental human rights violations, religious tenets
violations, conspicuous criminal omissions and unforgiveable legislative
indiscretions. The Bill should therefore be killed immediately and not
presented for the last reading.
The full title of the Bill is, AN ACT TO
PROVIDE FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL GRAZING RESERVE (ESTABLISHMENT
AND DEVELOPMENT) COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION AND CONTROL OF NATIONAL
GRAZING RESERVES AND STOCK ROUTES AND OTHER MATTERS CONNECTED THEREWITH. Its
sponsor is Senator Zainab Kure, wife of a two-time Governor of Niger State.
Hajiya Zainab Kure,
who is the current Senate
Committee Chairman on Marine Transport, was born on 24
November 1959 and she was elected Senator for the Niger South constituency of Niger State on
the platform of the PDP. She is a second-term Senator who bagged a Political
Science degree from the prestigious Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria, in 1984. She
worked as a civil servant in Niger State, rising to the position of Permanent
Secretary before veering into politics. She sponsored this same Bill in 2008 during
the 6th National Assembly but it received a hostile reception. She
also sponsored the National Poverty Eradication Commission Bill in the same
year. She is Nupe by tribe.
THE BILL: The Bill’s concluding
Explanatory Memorandum says that the Bill seeks to provide for, among other
things, the establishment of the National Grazing Reserve Commission of
Nigeria, for the preservation and control of national grazing reserves and
stock routes in the country. Its key provisions and high points include, but are
not limited to, the following:
1.
To establish a National Grazing Reserve
Commission (NGRC), a body corporate.
2.
The NGRC may acquire, hold, lease or
dispose of any property, moveable or immoveable for the purpose of carrying out
its function.
3.
The NGRC shall have a governing Council
headed by a Chairman appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate
with members representing the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Rural
Development and Water Resources, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Environment,
Housing and Urban Development, the National Commission for Nomadic Education and
shall also have a Director General.
4.
To raise monies by way of grants, loans,
borrowing, subsidies and donations.
5.
The following lands may be subject to
the provisions of the Act to be constituted as National Grazing Reserves and
Stock Routes:
(a) Lands
at the disposal of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
(b) Any
lands in respect of which it appears to the Commission that grazing in such
land should be practiced.
(c) Any
land acquired by the Commission through purchase, assignment, gift or otherwise
howsoever.
6.
State Governments shall be given notice
first before land acquisition and gazetting.
7.
The Commission shall pay compensation to
persons affected by any land acquisition.
8.
There shall be no improvements,
encroachment, bush burning, hunting, use of chemicals and felling of trees by
anyone inside lands acquired and demarcated as National Grazing Reserves or
Stock Routes.
9.
Contravention of any of the provisions
in (8) above shall be punishable by a fine of N50,000 or 5 years imprisonment
or both.
10.
No Court of law shall carry out
execution of its judgment or attachment of court process issued against the
Commission in any action or suit without obtaining the prior consent of the
Attorney General of the Federation.
11.
For the time being, the Commission shall
report to the Honorable Minster for Agriculture and Water Resources.
12.
Native communities referred to in the
Bill shall be any group of persons occupying any lands in accordance with, and
subject to native law and custom.
13.
Stock Routes shall mean tertiary or
secondary or inter-state stock routes linking two or more States together or
leading from grazing reserve to grazing reserve.
14.
When passed into law, the Act shall be
cited as The National Grazing Reserve Commission (Establishment and
Development) Bill 2008.
SUPPORTERS’ ARGUMENT: The first
surprise regarding this Bill is that the sponsor, Senator Kure, did not say the
truth about the most important thing that her Bill is intended to achieve, that
is, to curb the incessant fatal feuds between Fulani nomadic cattle rearers and
farmers all over the country. When she presented it, she tried to prove its
relevance with a lot of wishy-washy points. She said the National Grazing
Reserves will be provided with incentives and facilities such as functional
Earth Dams, Water Points, Dairy Processing Centres, Schools, functional Barns
and Livestock service centres but didn’t say for who’s benefit and why. She
added that the Bill, if passed into law, would lead to the establishment of
National Grazing Commission that would be empowered to enforce Gracing Reserve
Laws across the country and then simply stated that grazing reserves were very
important.
Next to support the Bill was Senator Ningi
from Bauchi State who rambled down memory lane about how Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa ensured the establishment of grazing reserves in the then Northern
Nigeria without mentioning anything about the clashes between pastoralists and
farmers all over the West African sub-region. Ningi also tried to score the
point that the economic value of Grazing Reserves to the nation included the
creation of employment opportunities, large scale production of food for
domestic consumption and for export, generation of income for the people and
for the government. Ningi conclude his support comments by saying that if the
activities of the large number of pastoralists in Nigeria were well harnessed, it
would diversify the economy and minimize unemployment, inflation and serve as a
means of giving the Fulani nomads a sense of belonging.
Alhaji Sale Bayeri, a PDP stalwart and
the self-styled spokesperson of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Rearers Association of
Nigeria, claims that there are 12 million cattle rearers in Nigeria and that
they have been at the receiving end of all sorts of atrocities from other
Nigerians and neglect by Government. The population figures are a figment of
his imagination because his tribesmen rejected the idea of including ‘Tribe’ as
a demographic date to be captured in the last population census. Authorities
quote about 18 million for all the Fulanis across West Africa. Many of these
are no more cattle rearers but educated and living in cities without any cattle.
No one can authoritatively quote a number today for the population of Nigerian
Faulanis.
OMISSIONS: I have noted the following as
deliberate or careless omissions from the proposed legislation:
1.
What informed the need for such a Bill
is not mentioned anywhere in the Bill. Is the incessant Fulani/farmers clashes?
What is the cause of all such clashes? Is it not because the Fulani cattle
rearers grazed their cattle on the farmers’ yet-to-be-harvested crops? Who is
therefore the antagonist? Should the cattle-rich aggressor Fulanis now be
protected or the defenseless poor peasant farmers?
2.
For whose use are the grazing reserves
and stock routes to be acquired? The Bill does not say. It will simply create
grazing reserves and stock routes for nomadic cattle rearers who we know are of
one ethnic group – Fulani. The clause cattle rearers in the Bill can be
replaced with the word Fulani, and it will be seen that it
is purely meant to serve the interest of one ethnic group out of over 250
ethnic groups on Nigeria.
3.
The Bill does not define who a cattle
rearer is. Will all Nigerians of all ethnic groups who own cattle,
sheep, goats, camels, donkeys, etc; be allowed to use the grazing reserves and
stock routes.
4.
Why does the Bill not require Cattle
rearers to contribute towards the acquisition of the grazing reserves and stock
routes when owning cattle is tantamount to being wealthy? Cattle rearers are
richer in terms of assets than the poor farmers who will be dispossessed of
their inherited ancestral lands. Shouldn’t the rich cattle rearers be made to
sell some cattle and pay for the rights the Bill wishes to give them?
5.
The fundamental rights, ancestral
rights, customary rights, rights to pursue a preferred means of livelihood of
farmers whose lands will be forcefully acquired are not mentioned anywhere in
the Bill. Don’t other Nigerians, especially agriculturalists, have equal rights
and entitlements from the Federal Government as cattle rearers?
6.
Arrangements for the resettlement of the
farmers and other land owners who will become internally displaced is not
mentioned anywhere in the Bill. Does the Bill assume that the compensation they
will receive will be adequate to buy comparative land elsewhere? Why should the
Bill not provide that the Grazing Reserves Commission will also negotiate and
pay for alternative land for persons who will be dispossessed of their farm
holdings?
7.
The Bill has been designed to create a
refugee crisis of internally displaced persons by legislation. This is the most
absurd and vexatious to put it mildly. How could right-thinking, intelligent
Nigerian legislators do this? Unless they are not what we all assume them to
be.
8.
Without saying it in clear terms, the
Bill, when and if passed into law, shall apply in retrospect from 2008.
Otherwise, why should it be cited as a 2008 legislation in our statute books? I
can’t see the rationale in this.
9.
The NGRC shall report ‘for the time
being’ to the Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources. Who will it eventually
be reporting to? The head of the Fulani tribe? Why this ambiguity? Something is
being hidden here by the sponsors of the Bill.
10.
There is no provision whatsoever in the
Bill for the policing of grazing reserves and stock routes by any of our
security agencies. They will be outside the purview of our law enforcement
agencies and therefore constitute lawless enclaves where the nomads will be above
the laws of Nigeria
IMPLICATIONS: Though the late Senator
Gyang Dantong, whose constituency has experienced some of the most intense
ethnic clashes with fatalities in thousands, supported the idea of the Bill, he
quickly cautioned that government should be very careful in such land
acquisitions in order not to infringe on the rights of other people. He
suggested that pastoralists should be encouraged instead to acquire land
through the use of their great wealth for the purposes enumerated in the
proposed legislation.
I am shocked that Nigerian adults in the
National Assembly would even tolerate such an obnoxious and vexatious proposal.
The Bill is a clear attempt to hand over the entire country, its economy, its
land, its citizens, its security and its future into the hands of one tribal
group – the Fulani. The Bill should have been thrown out at first presentation.
The Bill proposes to establish a National
Grazing Reserve Commission (NGRC) for the country. The NGRC will be charged
with the responsibility of using funds received from the Federal Government to
forcefully acquire farmlands from Nigerians in all the 36 States of the
country, develop same at Government expense through the provision of bore
holes, water reservoirs, etc; for the exclusive use of nomadic cattle rearers
(or pasturalists), whom everyone knows, are of only one ethnic stock – Fulanis
– out of over 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria. All other Nigerians who venture
into these grazing reserves for whatever reason would be fined or imprisoned or
both.
The Fulani people have roamed the entire
West African landscape since the 12th Century. They are known to be
highly temperamental and unforgiving. They boast of having never lost a war in history.
They have rejected civilization all this while and have chosen to continue practicing
a medieval style cattle rearing which entails following the weather and
vegetation. They therefore do not own land or landed property, but great wealth
in terms of heads of cattle.
What if a State is inundated and
overwhelmed by large numbers of cattle rearers who must graze in it and also
pass through it to other States as Benue, Plateau, Nassarawa, Kaduna and Benue
States are sure to be? Will their citizens and State Governors have the right
to object or say how much grazing land may be taken or will compulsion be used?
In which markets will the Fulanis
eventually sell their fat cattle? Will the displaced natives be very happy to
do business with them after taking over their farm lands? Will new kinds of
animosities and backlashes not develop? For example, the boycott of all
Fulani-produced dairy products could be the first backlash. Will this
legislation promote peaceful coexistence or greater hatred?
FULANI/FARMER CLASHES: What has informed
the couching of this Bill by its sponsors is the incessant clashes between
Fulani herdsmen and farmers in many parts of the country especially in the Christian
Middle Belt, especially Plateau State, Benue State, Nassarawa State and the
southern half of Kaduna State and Bauchi State.
The question that every serious-minded Nigerian
should ask is, what is the cause of the bloody clashes between the nomads and
their host communities? The answer is not far, yet Senator Kure and her
co-travelers would want the world to believe that it is something else.
Each and every clash has been triggered
by the Fulani’s inadvertent or deliberate grazing of their cattle on freshly
germinating farm crops, fully mature crops or harvested crops still on the
farm. When confronted, the nomads are never apologetic. Instead, they organize cold-blooded
night attacks on entire villages using guns, machetes and military camouflage.
Reprisal attacks by these communities only attract even more vicious attacks.
The Nigerian press has reported enough of these for me to bother to reproduce
them here.
Shortly after each attack or a reprisal
attack, the war of wits commences in the local and international press by the
Fulani elite. Spokesmen of the attackers have even given press conferences to
state reasons for their attacks. Nigerian security agencies always rush to press
to give their own accounts, while the victims are left to try and debunk all of
them. Legislators and State Governors have accused the military authorities deployed
to provide security in vulnerable areas of being complicit, culpable and
compromising. Such accusations and counter-accusations continue even as we
speak.
A report in the SUNNEWS of 6th August
2012 says, “It is also a source of problems in Idoma land in Benue State and
some parts of Southern Nigeria, where cattle rearers, without any compunctions
or remorse, run their cattle over critical farmland, destroying crops. It is
this penchant of Fulani cattle herdsman for illegally appropriating farmland
wherever they choose that this bill is seeking to legalize with the proposed
Grazing Rights Commission.”
The Fulanis have lived side-by-side the
Beroms of Plateau State in a symbiotic relationship for upwards of 200 years. Cattle
manure, meat, cheese, milk and other dairy products are provided by the pasturalists
while the Beroms allow them settle for a while on their farm lands. Cattle
should be grazed only in permitted areas and never on farm crops still on the
farm. The relationship became so cozy that the Beroms even loaned their male
children to the Fulanis to graze for them for a period after which they were
paid in kind with a calf or two. Several Vom, Kuru and Fan farmers are now
cattle owners and cattle rearers in their own right. You could say, Fulanis and
Beroms have actually become ‘cousins’. Other ethnic groups in Bauchi, Yobe,
Gombe, Adamawa, Taraba, Nassarawa, Niger and Kaduna States can easily relate to
this type of relationship in their localities.
What went wrong? is the million-dollar
question. Fulani populations grew, some of them became educated, deforestation,
desert encroachment, urbanization, inefficient nomadic lifestyle, politics and
lastly religion, have been introduced into the equation making it quadratic.
Since the equation cannot balance, hell has been let loose. There is no easy
solution to the problem, certainly not Kure’s Grazing Reserves Bill.
Honorable Simon Mwadkwon, PDP, who
represents the Barakin Ladi-Riyom Federal Constituency in the House of Representative,
has continued to use every opportunity to sound the great dangers of the
Grazing Reserves Commission Bill. He explains that its real spirit is hidden in
ethnic and religious expansionism by the Hausa and Fulani tribes who have an
inordinate ambition to Islamize the whole country and also to rule it in perpetuity.
In Mwadkwon’s words in an interview he
granted Anayo Okolie of BESTNAIRA, “It is also unfortunate that in the 21st
Century, the Fulani and Hausa people believe that they must rule the people at
all cost and must not allow other people to have control over their destiny
…….. They have tried by all means using the international media, the Hausa
section of the BBC and the Voice of America, to paint the Plateau person in bad
light to the world, even when it is clearly known that they are the aggressors……..
The problem is that President Goodluck Jonathan seems not to have the political
will to tackle this problem. I don’t know what he is afraid of. He is the Chief
Security Officer and Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed Forces in Nigeria and
has the power to give directives”.
In another interview reported in TRIBUNE
of 11 June 2012, Mwadkwon said, “The cause of the incessant hostilities in
his constituency can be attributed to the Fulani’s expansionist tendency, which
started with the Usman Dan Fodio jihad of 1804. It has been their agenda since
1804 to capture the Middle Belt region and use it as a launch pad to capture
the South. It is their belief that once the northern minorities are captured,
they would be willing tools for the capture of the South. Another reason is the
quest for grazing reserves and that was why the House of Representatives killed
the bill on grazing reserves (in 2008) because it would have caused a lot of
havoc in the country. The Fulani cannot lay claim to any village, as they do
not have any, but are tenants who pay royalty to the people.”
Coincidentally, I have been reading the
Islamic Perspective article titled, “Rights of Neighbors & Strong Society”,
on page 29 of the January 18, 2013, edition of Leadership newspaper. The
author, Fethullah Gulen, wrote in the fifth paragraph, “If the rights of neighbors
are stressed so much in the Qu’ran and the Tradition of the Prophet, then it is
an issue of great importance. In this respect, a Muslim should embrace – near
or distant – all of their neighbors magnanimously.” The Holy Bible says in Acts 17:26 that it is
God who allocated the geographical demarcations of each tribe, while Proverbs
22:28 says that the ancient boundary stones set by our ancestors should not be
moved. Therefore, support for this Bill will pitch the supporter in direct
contravention of his or her religious teachings. As can be observed, the debate
on the Bill has already pitched Muslim legislators and Christian legislators on
opposite sides - for and against.
INHERENT DANGERS: I will enumerate the numerous
serious dangers inherent in the creation of grazing reserves and stock routes
throughout the country as provided for in the Bill. Supporters of the Bill
should consider these and retrace their steps.
The Bill, if passed into law, will take
care of the interest on only one ethnic group in a country of over 250 ethnic
groups. It is, therefore, inconsiderate and insensitive towards other
Nigerians. This is not the only ethnic group to have problems in the country.
It admits that coexistence between Fulanis and other Nigerians is impossible
and so fences must be built to keep us apart like wild beasts.
The Bill, if passed, will forcefully
take over ancestral lands from other Nigerians and displace them. A problem of
internally displaced persons (IDPs) would have been created by Federal
legislation, which is a big shame. These are farmers from time immemorial who
cannot suddenly change their means of livelihood, just like the Fulanis who
have refused to change theirs for centuries. All Nigerian have equal rights and
must all be treated equally and fairly.
Stock routes linking up grazing reserves
throughout the country with no provision for security, is an open invitation for
foreign invaders to infiltrate and traverse the length and breadth of the
country at will. Our security will be thoroughly compromised. Plateau State
government claims to have documentary evidence such a threat, therefore, this
fear is not far-fetched. Boko Haram insurgents are here while terrorist groups
are close by in Somalia and Mali. We need to improve our surveillance apparatus
instead of opening up un-policed corridors for the free and easy movement of
mercenaries and weapons.
If the Fulanis decide to use these
so-called stock routes as safe corridors for the transportation of contraband
goods or weapons, we would have been the most foolish people on earth to create
such a safe haven for them.
If passed, the Bill would create a
lawless society since nobody else would be allowed to enter these grazing
reserves and stock routes, not even the Military or the Police because it is
not provided for in the Bill. If our past experience is anything to go by, we have
not been able to police our few pipelines in the South-South and South-West of
the country, can we dream of putting adequate surveillance in place for all grazing
reserves and stock routes throughout the country? Even without a grazing
reserve law in place, the nomads refused to allow the JTF personnel access into
their enclaves in Baraking Ladi and Riyom Local Governments of Plateau State in
2012 following the deaths of Senator Gyang Dantong and Hon. Gyang Fulani. This
was even after the JTF Commander unprofessionally gave them a 48-hour notice to
move their families and cattle to safety so that the military could comb the hills
for mercenaries because evidence
suggested that armed uniformed men might have been involved in the attacks on
Berom villages all these years.
If passed, unspecified but huge Federal
funding would be used to acquire land and develop same just to preserve a
primitive life style of a few people who have refused to partake in the
technological and social advancements that the country has recorded. There is
no justification for this federal funding, which will be to the detriment of
other very needy sectors of the economy.
The Bill envisages the uprooting of
entire ‘native communities’ from their ancestral homes and yet its sponsors
don’t think that such an action would be inhuman and barbaric.
The Bill relies heavily on the
contentious Land Use Act 1978 which the NASS has already slated for removal
from the Constitution so that it’s provisions can be debated and amended. To
use it when we know that we do not like it and that we are about to amend it
would be wrong. Let’s wait for its amendment and then see if acquisition of
land for grazing reserves and stock routes would still be possible.
Our Constitution provides in Section 315 and sub-section
5 that nothing shall invalidate any of its provisions, which shall continue to
apply as any other constitutional provisions and shall not be repealed except
in accordance with the rigorous provisions for the alteration of the
constitution itself. The National Grazing Reserves Commission Bill is an
attempt to create the kind of legislation that S315(5) has blocked.
That any litigation on the acquisition
of land by the National Grazing Reserve Commission must obtain the prior
approval of the Attorney General of the Federation is a repressive provision
which limits the rights of the citizens and governments of the country and
therefore violates our Constitution and basic human rights. The proponents of
the Bill obviously realized from the onset that the Bill, if passed into law,
will be an unpopular legislation that will be rejected and challenged in the
courts by a majority of Nigerians and so they included this repressive
provision.
The Land Use Act provides
that "all land comprised in the territory of each State in the Federation
are hereby vested in the Governor of that State and such land shall be held in
trust and administered for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians”. The
Grazing Reserve Commission Bill is in direct contraventions of this provision
it does not serve the ‘common benefit’ of all Nigerians. So why proceed in
folly?
SUGGESTIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS: My
suggestions for approaching the issue of communal clashes between our
much-needed nomadic pastoralists and their farmer-neighbors are as follows:
1.
Avoid the use of legislation when trying
to solve a social problem because it doesn’t solve the problem. It can only
temporarily favor one party while the fires glow underneath, creating a time
bomb which must explode sooner or later.
2.
What should be removed is the age-old
nomadic way of life, and not all the neighbors of the nomads along their
migratory routes in all 36 States of the country. What else can the peasant
farmers do with their compensation money apart from farming, and where else can
they go and farm if uprooted from their ancestral homes? Just as cattle are
very valuable assets to the nomads, so is the land to the agriculturalists and
none of us is superior to the other.
3.
The nomads among us should be assisted
to settle down to a sedentary life style. The nomadic way of life can no longer
be sustained by anybody. Adopting modern methods of integrated farming on
ranches is now inevitable for the nomads.
4.
The cattle rearers should sell some of
their cattle and buy land with the proceeds in any part of the country of their
choice. Government should buy land for them when they can afford it for
themselves.
5.
They should then take up indigeneship of
those States, Local Governments and Districts which they have chosen. Remember
that as at now they are just Nigerian citizens with no other identity. The
States that the nomads decide to adopt as theirs should take up the burden of helping
them settle down. Any Federal funding should go to those States as special nomadic
Fulani resettlement grants.
6.
Where huge numbers of nomads choose a
State and the State feels it would be overburdened, such a State should be able
to peg the numbers it would accept or else the Middle Belt states may be
overrun. Thousands and thousands may choose Plateau, Benue and Nassarawa
States, while none may choose Kano or Osun or Ebonyi States.
7.
The NASS should adopt a resolution in
line with the suggestions above and avoid creating yet another Federal agency.
The Federal Government is currently looking for ways of reducing the over 450
agencies it has.
8.
States should enact legislation that
prescribes stiff penalties for cattle rearers whose cattle graze on other
people’s farm crops illegally. This has been the source of all the friction. No
one in the country hates the nomads. To the contrary, everyone needs them for
the dairy products and beef they supply.
9.
All nomads should be made to send their
children to school before they benefit from any of the arrangements suggested
here. Education will guarantee the future success of the kind of animal husbandry
that they must adopt now.
CONCLUSION: Only one conclusion can be
drawn at the end of this analysis. The Bill is so ill-conceived that it
constitutes a time bomb which must be jettisoned without further ado. I
strongly recommend to all our Federal legislators to save Nigeria the tragedy
that will follow the passage of such a law. The perennial clashes between
nomadic people and farmers should be studied carefully in order to ascertain
their remote and immediate causes before solutions are proffered. Meanwhile, let
all cattle rearers keep their cattle off their neighbors’ farms.
