The controversy over the plan by the Federal Government to set up Rural Grazing Areas (RUGA) for herdsmen in all parts of the country has set passions ablaze across the polity. On one side of the divide are those who believe that President Muhammadu Buhari, in furtherance of an alleged plan to “Fulanise” and “Islamise” the country, wants to use the initiative to give Fulani herdsmen a foothold in the southern part of the country with the ultimate objective of taking over large swathes of the South-West, South-East and South-South of Nigeria, and establishing emirates in them.
This plan is said to be another aspect of the violence being unleashed by herdsmen to overrun the south of the country. Those who are of this view have been quick to trace such innocent accommodation of, and provision of grazing lands to Fulani herdsmen, as the precursor of the unending ethnic clashes in states like Plateau and Benue. The danger of this prospect is also clear in Kwara where a Fulani settler killed the Yoruba king, Afonja, and till today, Ilorin is an emirate, headed by an Emir.
There are, on the other hand, those who see the RUGA initiative as a purely economic one designed to provide grazing grounds for herdsmen who are being driven by the desertification of the North to find pasture for their cows in the southern part of the country.
The planned RUGA scheme has drawn the ire of people in certain states, with some people in these states threatening to rise up against any state government that tries to subscribe to the initiative. The plan has also come at a time when cattle rearers are offering to set up vigilance groups in southern Nigeria.
The campaign against RUGA in southern Nigeria is understandable. For some years now, herdsmen have become a menace in some areas in that part of the country, killing, maiming and raping innocent citizens. It is needless going over the list of places they have attacked and raped people in the southern parts of the country.
In spite of the many denials to the contrary, it is clear that the herdsmen have come to see the South-West and South-East of the country as fair game, as the experiences of travelers on many highways in the parts of the country have shown.
But then, at the root of the whole issue is the herdsmen’s desperate quest for grazing land for their cattle. For the cattle rearers, finding pasture for their cattle is now a matter of life and death. It is therefore important that they should be supported to develop a conductive environment to tend their cattle.
Ranching is the way to go on this matter, and there is no debating the fact that the present problems could be solved when the cattle owners are assisted to be able to own and operate their own ranches and grazing areas.
It cannot strictly be a government affair as the cattle owners have a responsibility to provide for their cattle. But the government can help to provide good areas for them to set up these ranches, without them constituting their cattle into a nuisance for the rest of the country. Cattle rearers under the aegis of Miyetti Allah have for long argued that the government has been involved in building roads and offering different types of assistance to different businesses in the country. They have been quick to cite rice production, the cotton industry and even the transportation sector as areas in which the government stepped in to directly help people engaged in these various businesses with input, including loans and necessary infrastructure, such as rice mills.
In this wise, the debate should not be on the propriety or otherwise of providing grazing areas for cattle, but where the RUGAs should be located. Although the initial reports said the grazing areas would be provided for in all parts of the country, with some enthusiasts erroneously citing section 43 of the Nigerian Constitution which guarantees the right of all Nigerians to acquire and own land in any part of the country, it is clear that not even the Federal Government can forcefully establish the reserves, except with the agreement of individual states, in which the Land Use Decree vests the ownership of land.
Many state governments have already expressed their opposition to the establishment of such reserves. They include Ekiti, Benue and Cross River. Subsequent reports have however said that only eleven states in the Northern part of the country have subscribed to the scheme.
If this is so, the government should go ahead with the RUGA projects in the 11 states in the north that are comfortable with the initiative while the states down south supply the herdsmen with grass that they need for feeding. This is a good way to go about this because there is no amount of land that is given to herdsmen as grazing reserves that can sufficiently provide for their cattle both now and in the future. It is basic common sense that as the cows are multiplying now and in the future, so also will the number of herdsmen, with a huge potential for conflicts and expansion beyond the grazing areas. This expansion will be natural, and not necessarily on account of any expansionist schemes of the herdsmen.
A herdsman with four wives and ten cows can, in the normal course of nature, be expected to multiply to a man, his four wives, sixteen children and a hundred or so cattle in a decade. Meanwhile, the grazing area allocated to the herdsmen cannot grow in such geometric progression. This will constitute a problem to the indigenous owners of the land. This is not necessarily because the southerners hate, or do not want to see herdsmen, but because the unbridled taking over of land in the south by Fulani herdsmen and other cattle rearers of indeterminate nationhood will be a security threat to the region.
In this regard, the wisest way to go will be for the government to establish the RUGA in the Northern parts of the country from where the herdsmen either hail, or share cultural and religions affinity with its people. If this is done, there will be no fear of undue expansionism, Islamization, Fulanization or a takeover of areas that have not been allocated to them.
The Federal Government and the states in the North of the country have a responsibility to provide such safe grazing zones and keep the herdsmen and their cattle out of the south where they have become a menace and a terror to the people. Already, the problem that the herdsmen constitute is capable of culminating in an all-out, widespread conflict, if not a war.
It is the responsibility of all Nigerians, especially the Federal Government and the states of Northern Nigeria, to guard against the inflammatory scenario. Let all cattle owners who can be found at all echelons of the society, including the president and many members of the National Assembly, make the necessary financial investments to take cattle rearing from the wandering model to the ranching model, which has been proven to be much better for meat and milk production of the cows, to bring better financial rewards for their owners.
The problem of foreign cattle rearers who are largely behind the killings and other violent acts in the country should also be checked. Nigeria should not be a free grazing land for all cattle rearers in Africa.