Banji Ojewale
After a long season of dithering over how to respond to nationwide killings by Fulani herdsmen across Nigeria, the federal authorities this week finally came up with an initiative proving merely to be one of theold tricks from the bag of a hag. We are on familiargrounds again. Nothing new has been said. It is the unveiling of the jaded strategy to bring the entire country under the rule of the cow, the cownisationof our communities nationwide.
From the bag of the hag has come the explanation that the killer herdsmen are our brothers and sisters we must learn to cohabit with. From the pouch also emerged the revelation that the herdsmen are fleeing warriors from Libya, looking for new theatres after the bloody conflict that consumed Libyan strongman, Muammar Gaddafi. Later, we were told the herdsmen are simple folks affected by the climate change that dried up the water and withered the grass their cattle fed on.
The tale changed to one that claimed that the elemental fury of the itinerant Fulanis was their reaction to the blocking of their grazing routes in the areas they were turning into bloody zones. Then this: the anti-grazing law passed by some state governments was responsible for the genocidal farmers-herdsmen clashes, said to have caused the maiming, destruction of property, deaths and displacement of thousands of Nigerians.
The government wouldn’t listen to popular pleas by the people toresort to less confrontational and provocative solutions to the herders’ problems, to confine the cattlemen to their states for grazing. There were suggestions of ranching the animals in settlements in the north complete with the basic needs for both cowmen and cows.
Some state governors even said they were ready to accommodate the herdsmen in government ranches to stop them from open grazing and vandalism of farms. But the federal government and the cattlemen set aside these proposals. The government did a lot of somersaults: first, it talked of looking for states outside the core north to set up the cow estates; next it pleaded for unhindered movement down south for the herdsmen; finally, the central government decided on erecting what it called cattle colonies, chiefly in the middle belt and the southern parts of the federation.
These proposals have all been rejected by the majority of the citizens on account of the failure of government to capture or address the concerns of the owners and inhabitants of the territories it wants to appropriate on behalf of the Fulanis. The landowners are suspicious of the motives of the government and the herdsmen it is fighting for. They do not believe the story would end with the cession of a few hectares or acres of prized land for the herdsmen and their families and their cows. You can’t establish an exclusive estate for a herdsman and expect him and family and animals not to come in tow. They are one household: the beasts, their owner and his harem and offspring.They come close to the population of a local government area in Africa’s most populous country.
Now, despite opposition to its plan to erect these cattle colonies in some states, the federal government is poised to ram the idea down our throats. On Tuesday this week, the government through the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Umar, gave the impression there is no going back in the march to cattle estates in the states. He called it the RugaSettlement. He said: ‘’The Rugasettlement is one of the very important things being done by the ministry and it is one of the best things that can happen not only to Nigeria but to most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is a concept that we developed to deal with internal security. We felt that to do away with herders-farmers’ conflict, we need to settle our nomads and those who breed animals. We want to put them in a place that has been developed as a settlement, where we provide water for their animals, pasture, schools for their children, security, agro-rangers, etc…and definitely in the next five to 10 years you will never see a nomad moving about, wandering or kidnapping. And this will end all these security challenges.’’
He says this Rugaproject has been approved by President MuhammaduBuhari, starting with 12 states he failed to identify. But several states have said they must not be numbered among the Rugacommunity of herdsmen. All the five southeast states are saying a non-negotiable ‘no’ to it. One of them, Imo, insists it would not allow itself to be roped into Ruga. Benue, epicenter of the early days of the bloodiest herdsmen’s attacks, says it has no land for the cowmen. Taraba says it will not accept it. And down southwest, Ondo has said it doesn’t believe in Ruga.
It is being rejected for a number of reasons. The central government’s cavalier approach to securing help for the herdsmen has alienated the people whose land it needs. The government thinks there is no alternative to its cattle colony solution. It is not addressing the anxieties of the states that a subtle form of internal ‘colonialism’ is in the making through Ruga.
The government is about to open a deadlier era of conflict if it attempts to foist alien citizens upon an unwilling civilization. Why uproot one culture and plant it in a strange soil?TheBuhari administration has disowned constitutional federalism by going for policies giving birth to suffocating centralism, uniformity and unilateral imposition. Federalism gains strength only when its diversities are acknowledged and respected and given depth by preserving them, not by killing them through domination of others in the union.
President Buhari must review his stand on Ruga as it is built mainly to benefit the herdsmen with no advantage to their hosts. He should be worried that even at takeoff, the scheme can’t stand the simple test of acceptability in the hands of those who are key to its success. If the community to host nomads is already disavowing at a distance those the president ispushing towards them, isn’t it sufficient alarm that some danger would follow when they are eventually forced into a meeting or union?
How can a rejected Ruga roar above the storms it would bring uponour fickle and fragilefraternity?
Ojewale writes from Lagos
*This piece was sent before the suspension of the Ruga settlement