BY KAYODE KOMOLAFE
The invasion of the residence of Nobelist Wole Soyinka in Abeokuta three months ago by some herdsmen and their cattle expectedly generated a widespread outrage. Although Soyinka was not attacked and neither did he attack the herdsmen or their cattle, yet his property was attacked by the cows on open grazing within his premises famously called Ijegba. On that occasion Soyinka said: “Cattle imperialism under any guise is an obscenity to humanity.”
Cattle imperialism? Perhaps some might have thought then that the playwright was being dramatic in the campaign against the anachronism of open grazing.
However, the reality of Soyinka’s characterisation of open grazing as the imperialism of cows was demonstrated on Monday by the egregious attack by President Muhammadu Buhari on the resolution of the 17 southern governors to ban open grazing in their states. By the statement which shouldn’t have been made, open grazing seemingly received a presidential imprimatur.
By so doing, the President has in a way disrupted whatever logic has been proffered since 2015 in the livestock production policy of his administration. The President is seemingly disarticulating the policies of his government.
This is self-defeating in many respects.
In the most unfortunate statement, the President questioned the “legality” of governors moving to put an end to open grazing. He accused them of “power show.”
To put it in the mildest form, not a few of Buhari’s compatriots would be grossly disappointed at the president’s statement. Questioning the legality of ending open grazing is unwittingly a defence of cattle imperialism! The situation is akin to giving cattle the power to colonise the farms and premises of other people. It is not clear if those who advise Buhari realise this conundrum.
This fouled policy atmosphere already created could have been avoided if the President had limited his pronouncement to the commencement of the reactivation of grazing reserves (a synonym for ranches) next month. This, of course, could have been consistent with the government’s approach of solving the problem with ranching.
In fact, elder statesmen Chief Edwin Clark said yesterday morning on Arise Television that the President’s statement was “inappropriate.” Speaking on the occasion of his 94th birthday, Clark advised the President to withdraw the politically offensive statement. In the alternative, Clark asked Buhari to go court to contest the legality of the ban on open grazing. The implications of the statement are doubtless negative in the present circumstance of Nigeria. Buhari should, therefore, take Clark’s advice.
In decent terms, it ought to be assumed that there is a consensus among the government and the people that the idea of open grazing is a national embarrassment. It is an indication that livestock production in Nigeria is still at level it was centuries ago. It is certainly unacceptable that the legality of open grazing is still a matter of debate in 2021 Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, Buhari only affirmed the opinion of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, who earlier argued for the “freedom” of herders and their cattle to graze on other people’s farms. Other lawyers have faulted the Malami’s reading of the constitution on the freedom of movement and residence. The lawyers have argued that the human freedom envisaged in the constitution could not be transferred to animals to destroy the farms of other persons. That’s why Buhari’s statement has been unsettling in many patriotic quarters.
Clearly, policy disarticulation is a baneful effect of the dysfunctionality prevalent in the Buhari administration. This is, perhaps, the most dysfunctional administration in the history of Nigeria. The administration is bereft policy articulation and coordination. It abysmally lacks coherence of purpose. You look in vain for its organising principle. It’s difficult to locate its philosophy of governance. A good number of the ministries, departments and agencies act as if they are micro republics on their own. Some executive departments operate without due regards to other arms of government. Others flagrantly violate rules and procedures of governance. Government’s departments make contradictory statements on policy issues. Even conflicting statements are issued on the same subject from the presidential villa. At times, heads of government departments agencies fight openly for turfs. At times, the war is even over office accommodation. Indeed, the real “power show’ is in Abuja. One ministry could take a policy step that clearly undermines the policy being implemented by another ministry. There is no authority there to impose sanctions. Sometimes the government takes a step that’s in direct opposition to its proclaimed policy.
More often than not, the government gets away with the policy flipflops because of the affliction of collective amnesia bedevilling the public sphere. Events occur at a dizzying rate such that the public could hardly follow the trends accurately.
However, with 24 months to the end of his tenure, the President should be in the legacy mode by now.
Buhari should, therefore, consciously make efforts to reverse this trend so that the positive things about administration would not be impaired by the dysfunctionality in the system.
Nothing, perhaps, illustrates the dysfunctionality in the Buhari administration more than the inexplicable rationalisation of the obsolete practice of open grazing.
As Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, reminded us as a guest columnist on this page last week, before the resolution of the 17 southern governors in Asaba, open grazing had been declared as “outdated’, “unsustainable” and “inappropriate’ by other fora. To replace open grazing, ranching has been broadly agreed upon as the modern form practice of animal husbandry. Falana said the policy essence of the resolution of the southern governors was coterminous with earlier resolutions of the constitutionally established National Executive Council (NEC) chaired by the Vice President; the Governors’ Forum of Nigeria comprising the 36 state governors and federal some appointees ; the Northern Governors’ Forum and the forum of the People Democratic Party (PDP) governors. Ranching has been adopted as the appropriate policy by these bodies and others in order to put an end to open grazing. Even the President’s statement on Monday contained hints about ranching as indicated above.
To imagine that the same administration questioning the legality of open grazing on Monday had come up earlier with the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP)! In July last year, there was a statement from the presidency on the matter: “The federal government is planning … to curb open grazing of animals that continue to pose security threats to farmers and herders. The overall benefit to the nation includes a drastic reduction of conflicts between herders and farmers.” Essentially, the plan was to modernise livestock production by developing ranches and humanising the condition of those who work in that important sector of the economy. About 24 states had already submitted applications to the federal government to embrace the plan. While the policy was being put together in the presidency, the rhythm of things was suddenly interrupted when from the same presidency the idea of Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) was introduced.
Meanwhile, “ruga” is also a Fulani word for human settlement. As a result, the essence of the policy was drowned in a huge controversy generated by the poor articulation of policies.
Officialdom was not sufficiently mindful of socio- political sensibilities amid diversity in its pronouncements. It was reminiscent of the use of the extremely offensive phrase, “cattle colonies,” by former agriculture minister, Chief Audu Ogbe, during the first term of Buhari. Some members of the public found the phrase repulsive. They rejected the idea of being colonised by cattle in order to have beef at the dinner table. Who would permit the establishment of a “colony” on his land? The whole problem arose because of mere phrasing of the policy. Prejudice was reinforced. The government was not trusted. In the process, hardly was the content of the policy judiciously examined. At that time, Ogbe said some lands had been designated for the implementation of the policy.
The consequences of the lack of policy coherence on the problem of open grazing are grave enough to rankle any sensitive government.
First, farmers all over the country have been bearing the brunt of the lawlessness of the herdsmen. It is important to stress that farmers have actually been groaning under the cattle imperialism in the north and south, east and west. The economic implications of this negative trend have been obvious for years. Crop production is undermined by an archaic method of livestock production. Cows invade cultivated lands and graze on produce of farmers with impunity. Meanwhile, it is beyond debate that open grazing is a highly unproductive method of animal husbandry. The herders and their cattle are overstressed and the output is low compared with the products of ranching.
The threat of food insecurity has been heightened by the cumulative effects of the activities of the herders who are accustomed to open crazing. Rural poverty has been worsened by the dislocation of framers from their farmlands.
Secondly, the resultant violence from the invasion of farmlands by herders has exacerbated insecurity in the land. The matter is made worse by the fact that some of the herders are reportedly from other West African countries. Even more dangerously, pure terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and other armed criminals pose as herders in the various forests in the country. Many lives have been lost in the violence attributed to open grazing. Many people have been displaced from their farmlands and villages. Livestock production has virtually turned from being agricultural practice into warfare in all parts of the country. There is no evidence that the gravity of the situation is grasped in the President’s statement. Neither is the import of the tragedy captured by the constitutional references earlier made by the attorney-general.
The political outcome of this trend is even more toxic. The economically destructive and socially dangerous activities of some herdsmen have taken a toll on the diversity management.
The whole of the Fulani ethnic group has been unjustly and irrationally demonised for the crimes of some herdsmen. Instead of mounting pressures on the government to tackle decisively the criminality of the those wreaking havoc around the country, sections of the elite have been indulging in ethnic profiling and peddling of prejudice. It is as if an ethnic label must be put on a crime before it could be dealt with according to the law. Invariably, the mismanagement of the nation’s diversity is again symptomatic in the seeming defence of the herdsmen by government. More than any other thing, this makes the President’s statement worrisome. Come to think of it. Buhari is a Fulani and he is from the north of Nigeria. The whole of the Fulani ethnic group is being wrongly profiled for the activities of some herders who happen to be Fulani. The President, in response to governors in the southern part of the country, is seen to be defending the offending herdsmen. To be sure, statements such as the one made on Monday by the President do not serve the cause of national integration.
By the way, it is important to point out a class-based hidden falsehood in the story. It is fundamentally wrong to imagine that Buhari is protecting the Fulani poor by rationalising open grazing in the 21st Century. After all, the President owns some cows. But his cows are not on the street of Daura, much less being roamed to Abuja, Abakaliki or Akure. The cows are orderly restricted to a place for rearing.
The genuine way to protect the interests of the poor fellows consigned to lives in the forest and exposed to the elements 24 hours of the day is to integrate them into modern way of rearing cattle. The true interest of the herders of the Fulani or any other ethnic stock is to organise cattle rearing in way that the families of the herders would live decent lives.
The children of the herders should have access to quality education and healthcare like the children of Buhari and Malami. That’s the way to protect their interests genuinely.
The freedom of open grazing that Buhari and Malami are seeking for the herders cannot bring about the welfare and security of the herders as specified in the constitution.
Open grazing has implications for the worsening insecurity and inter-ethnic conflicts in the country. This fact alone should have informed the articulation of policy on the problem.
Besides, a statement from the presidency in response to governors from the southern part of the country should have been imbued with greater geo-political sensibility. Rather than accuse the governors of “power show,” the President should realise that they are only ventilating the grievances of their people.
The publicists of the government will soon point to tangible achievements in infrastructure, welfare programmes and diplomacy as part of the observance of May 29.
At the risk of sounding repetitive on this score, however, beyond bricks and mortar the legacy of Buhari would be assessed on the basis of the leadership he gives or fails to give in the matter of security and the intangible question of national unity.
