Incessant Attacks on Falae’s Farm

James Sowole writes on the incessant attacks on Olu Falae’s farm by suspected herdsmen

Until September 2015, the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Chief Olu Falae, was not known to many to be a commercial farmer. Though, the former SGF had been in farming business for more than three decades and had been having rough deals with herdsmen over time, his name became very prominent in the farming world on September 21, 2015, when he was kidnapped on his farm located at Ilado community in Akure North Local Government Area of Ondo State on his birthday by some Fulani herdsmen, who kept him in their den for four days until a ransom was paid for his release.
The abduction of the foremost technocrat became a subject of national discourse and which brought the then Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, to Ondo State after getting matching orders from President Muhammadu Buhari for an operation that later led to the arrest of some of the abductors.

The five men that were arrested in connection with the abduction were prosecuted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Despite this celebrated incident and their subsequent conviction, the herdsmen were undeterred from leading their animals to the farm of the former Minister of Finance and which always made headlines in the media.

Since the abduction incident, whenever a reporter calls his editor to give a hint about a story on Falae, the first thought has always been in relation to herdsmen and his farm. This is because attacks on the octogenarian’s farm had become a recurring decimal and had on one occasion led to the killing of one of his guards and the matter remained unresolved.

The incessant attacks on Falae’s farm have been a source of worry not only to the owner but to various stakeholders including government and security agencies maybe because of his status in the society.
The latest of the attack on the former SGF’s farm took a new dimension because it involved setting ablaze of his palm oil plantation. This latest incident made him to open up on several attacks including some of those that were not reported in the media. Sequel to the latest incident, the former minister revealed his thoughts about the motive of the attacks.

“I don’t know why the herdsmen are always attacking my farm, they did it last year, they did the same year before the last. That is how they burn it every year so that fresh grass can come out for their cattle to eat. The mature oil palm trees that have been bearing fruits to make palm oil have been burnt down. This is a wicked act and
malicious damage, this goes beyond cattle wanting to eat, cattle don’t eat oil palm. This is a malicious attack. The question is: why are they
burning my crops? I did not plant on their land. These people want to
cause chaos in Nigeria.
“What that tells me is not a question of cattle eating grass; it is a
matter of people destroying other people’s means of livelihood consciously, maliciously and deliberately. Palm trees are planted nine meters apart, it is not combustible. But they stoke its dry leaves and set it on fire.  They burn them, why? That does not feed the cattle; they just want to destroy my assets. This is an attack on my livelihood, on what I
possess. It is continuous, they do it every year. For the agric
people, this is an attack to our food production. People are afraid
now to plant, they do not have guarantee that the plants would not
be destroyed. They have destroyed my 10 hectares of cassava. Whoever
borrows money to plant now; the asset will be ruined,” he said.
Falae said he was at a time tolerating the herdsmen because they
usually come to take water for the cattle from the farm dam but the
matter took another dimension when they do not want to feed the
animals with grass again.
“At first they will come in the night to fetch water and we were
tolerant because they did not touch or destroy anything but we did not
allow them to stay here but later it took a different turn all over
Nigeria.
“They will come in the night, eat our maize and in the last three
years, I’ve reported to the police over 10 times. Elements of the
same people kidnapped me, when people said they were Fulani
herdsmen but everybody knows a Fulani man in Nigeria, I have been at
the receiving end for long even after I was kidnapped, they came back
and killed one of my guards and the case remains an unsolved murder
case.
“They would drive their cattle through the uncultivated part of the
farm where there is grass, they will not eat the grass, they would eat from my maize and cassava farm, But the question is why are they doing that ?
“One of my workers, who lived on the farm once told me that
occasionally when he hunted, he challenged one of the herdsmen, on why they destroyed the farm but he said the Fulani herdsman replied that ‘how we go dey chop garri where rice dey?’ So. To the herdsman, my maize and cassava is the preferred rice, the grass which is normal cattle feed has now become garri which is not desirable as rice, It is unfair and act of selfishness killing other people’s business to sustain their own,” he lamented.

While adducing the herders’ selfish reasons for grazing on his maize, cassava and other arable crops, Falae continued to wonder why the burning of his palm plantation?

“But what I don’t understand is that why did they burn my oil palm plantation? They did so last year, I have the video, mature palm trees with fruits on them, they set them on fire. The oil palm does not benefit the cattle or herdsmen in many ways, it only hurts me, my guess is that they did it because they hate me because I have not abandoned the land to them.

“They see me as an obstacle for them to take over the land permanently. They feel that by burning my farm, I will be so frustrated that I will abandon the land and they will inherit it and that will never, never happen. This last year I planted oil palm seedlings, they went and uprooted all the seedlings, when I saw what they did, I instructed my workers to replant them and they replanted them, yet the herdsmen went back, uprooted the seedlings and took them away to destroy them.
“Of course, herdsmen don’t eat palm trees as I said, cattle don’t eat palm trees and so they took them away for destruction why? They deliberately want to be hurting me hoping that that will lead to my
abandoning the farm to them. That is my guess, maybe they too should come out to say their own reason.

“The destruction does not enhance their well-being. If they drive the cows to eat my maize and destroy my assets, it enhances their assets using it to subsidise their cows. But when they burn my plantation, there is no rationality except malice and hatred,” Falae stated.

To Falae, there are solutions to solve the problems of the herdsmen destroying his farms and which must involve him and the government.

“What is more important is that I will take some actions and government should take steps too to make sure they don’t do it again and if they don’t take steps to prevent it, it means that government supports what they are doing, that means the government is not offended by what they are doing. Government at all levels, especially the federal government should be a government for all of us regardless of how many votes we cast at the election time, we are all entitled to the protection of the federal government.”

However, the former SGF rejected in its entirety, the federal government’s proposal to establish cattle colonies in various parts of the country.

“In Nigeria; to mention the word colony has political connotation not economic. A colony is a political entity which someone said he wants to create in the territory of another; that is a provocation; that is terrible thing for anybody to contemplate. I am sure it was a mistake.

“I hope my friend Audu Ogbeh, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, will withdraw that obnoxious policy. In any case, with what is going on, I can tell you as a leader of our race, the Yoruba people will not concede one inch of its territory as a colony to another person.

“I did not find my father as a slave, he never told me he was farming for other people; I will join with other people and pay the price we have to pay; any price to maintain the freedom we have inherited. I am farming on my own land; I did not go elsewhere to farm.

“There shall be no colony, not in Yorubaland. What happened last year was tremendous and we made claim of over two million that is still pending; we are not asking for compensation, what we are asking is for our farms to be left alone. The place that got burnt on my farm
will be up to 125 hectares. The word colony is a repugnant political word because it means one group of people dominating another. The British came to Nigeria and by force colonised us and made us their possession.

“A colonial arrangement regards other human beings as possession of others. An adult educated Nigerian will use that word colony, to describe any part of his country that you want to bring back colonial status. It is almost treason, it is repugnant, provocative and should be withdrawn and the person who coined it should apologise to Nigerians. Looking at the proposal itself, assuming other terms have been used, it is unsound and makes no sense,” he said.

Falae said the federal government should do what other countries of the world do when they are confronted with the same problems.

“This is not a problem that cannot be solved. Many nations have gone through this, this mode of cattle rearing is universal but in the last 100 years most nation’s have solved the problem by adopting
ranching.

“Ranching is cattle farming and a legitimate and very profitable business run by private business men but they are trying to make my crops to feed their cattle to subsidise their own business because they are forcing me by invading my farm in the night to supply free food to their cattle and when they sell the cattle they don’t give me part of the money.

“This is a system that cannot survive and I expected the government to have stopped it, we are not saying cattle rearing should be stopped but the cattle rearers should be assisted to set up or do their business without hurting anybody.

“Hurting farmers is not acceptable. So the proposal that colony should be established and rangers will accompany cattle moving from one colony to another is a very provocative and repugnant proposal.

“Cattle rearing is private business, it is not the business of government. But government can only get involved in it the way they get involved in the cocoa or rice production. They are not to take cattle rearing as government business.

“There are states which are homes to cattle. Cattle are indigenous to certain parts of Nigeria, it is not indigenous to us in Akure and Ondo State here. Let the state governments in those areas where these cattle come from, do what Sadauna used to do in those days. He provided watering holes, grazing reserves in various parts of the North for the comfort and convenience of these herdsmen and their cattle.

“In the last 30 years, it is as if the state governments are not doing what they were supposed to do to their people, hence the herdsmen come down here to cause trouble.

“Let the government use the revenue for the benefit of their people, the states in the North have more territories than we in the South here, so let the state governments in those areas create grazing reserves for private cattle owners to set up their ranches, they can even guarantee their loans, they can build big ranches with provision of water and slaughtering and processing facilities and other facilities. That is the way it is done everywhere in the world. There are some ranches in the United States of America where there are over a million cows, we never see cattle at the JF Kennedy Airport but here in Akure Airport, go there you find the cattle there.

“We know what the solution should be, cattle roaming around is primitive and cannot continue in the 21st Century. The solution I proposed because I spent four days with my kidnappers in the bush and I am in sympathy with their conditions. The comfort which we take for granted, they never have. They need special assistance. I am not saying the federal government should not assist but the primary responsibility for animal husbandry belongs to the state government. The state government should be made to accept their responsibility by looking at their people and the farmers too should be the responsibility of the state government,” he said.