RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Tiv Perspective on Grazing reserves for Fulani cattle

The Minister of Agriculture is not right. He is plain wrong. The way of life of the cattle Fulani is clearly not sustainable. The violent crises including human and material costs, their way of life has visited on peace-loving, innocent Nigerian communities in their ancestral homeland  in different parts of the country, is eloquent evidence. It is the way of the cattle Fulani or no way.

A majority of the cattle Fulani in Nigerian may not be legally resident Nigerians. Even when they are, they are itinerant business people raising cattle on other peoples' home and farm lands .  This –is unlikely to be tolerated in a country of laws, on the terms that the cattle Fulani insist and get away with, against the will of the owners of the land the cattle Fulani feel they and their cattle are entitled to. They have no costs of business. They cover no costs of their trade. They transfer all the costs of their trade to others including non-customers. They keep all the revenue they earn from their trade.- They take much of it outside Nigeria. They pay no taxes to the state. This trade must be one of the most profitable trade that there is. Any surprise then that the cattle Fulani insist on it as it presently happens.

Supporters of the cattle Fulani argue that their trade helps to meet Nigeria's nutritional (protein) needs. If it does, it is not the most effective and efficient way to make that contribution. The price of beef continues to be over the roof. Beef has become an occasional delicacy for most Nigerians.

The reality is that ways of life do not stay the same. They have not through history. Agriculture including animal husbandry was first nomadic. Things changed. Times changed. Costs became oppressive and unaffordable. Productivity needed to improve. Agriculture including animal husbandry took notice. Agriculture changed and continues to do so. The Fulani cattle herders and their supporters in Nigeria refuse to accept this fact of shared human experience and modern life. If they will not be persuaded to accept inevitable change, they may have to pay the full costs or be forced to.

Nigeria does not owe any Nigerian including the nomadic cattle Fulani, a right to a choice of an outmoded way of life, that threatens and upsets peace and amity in different communities, in different parts of the country. One hoped that after many years of, and billions of naira, spent on nomadic education, the cattle Fulani and their supporters would see the folly in their insisting on an  unsustainable ancient way of life, that was practiced all over the world , and given up for good reasons. What is going on?

Is the proposal of grazing reserves for cattle Fulani only not driven by a costly, ill-advised, and outrageous sense of entitlement of a select belligerent minority at the expense of the peaceful majority? Why does Nigeria have to adjust to the ways of the Fulani when everyone other Nigerians adjust to the ways of Nigeria and the modern world? For how long with this subsidization of private profits from an unsustainable way of life continue?

What is a grazing reserve? Why this for the exclusive and private benefit and use of the cattle Fulani? Who will pay the acquisition, security, and other costs? Will government compulsorily acquire individuals' and communities' land against the will of legitimate owners? Who will police the reserves? What is the evidence that boundaries will  be respected by especially the cattle Fulani?  They are many more questions that arise.

Accommodation of difference is expected and must be practiced in a democratic state. That is not to say that the march toward peace and progress should be backward and not forward. The cost of peace has to be affordable for peace to be worth it. It is time Nigeria started doing the right things and doing them right.

oa

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php/opinion/columnist/156059-karshima-shilgba-this-injustice-will-not-stand

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Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, PhD

Department of Political Science and Public Administration,

Babcock University,

Ogun State, Nigeria.

P. M. B. 21244, Ikeja, Lagos.

Primary email : jumoyin@yahoo.co.uk

Institutional website: www.babcock.edu.ng 

"Intelligence plus character -- that is the goal of true education" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

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