Herdsmen are victims of circumstances, suffering because of Buhari —Miyetti Allah national secretary

The national secretary of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Baba Othman Ngelzarma speaks with COLLINS NNABUIFE on some of the measures the Federal Government needs to put in place to bring about a lasting peace between farmers and herdsmen in the country, the shortcomings of the Anti-Open Grazing Laws being implemented in some states and other issues.

HOW did you receive the call by Garus Gololo for the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, to step down or be forced to step down?

I was surprised when I heard it, because if this guy is claiming to be the chairman of MACBAN in Benue State, it is impersonation. If it is established that he is parading himself either as the chairman or coordinator of Miyetti Allah in Benue, we will definitely sanction him and report him to the appropriate authorities.

The clarification I would want to make is that Garus Gololo is not the chairman of Benue State Miyetti Allah; neither is he the coordinator of MACBAN. Garus Gololo was given an appointment as adviser to the president of MACBAN during the last tenure and with the expiration of the last tenure in March, his appointment ended. The appointment was automatically terminated with the expiration of the last tenure in March 2018 and the new executive just came on board in April. So, going by this, one will know that Garus Gololo is just a member of Miyetti Allah; he has no position whatsoever in the association. So, because of this, when I heard this statement that was credited to Miyetti Allah, I was so flabbergasted and surprised, because I know Garus Gololo was not in the capacity to speak on behalf of the association, considering what I told you.

So, Garus Gololo is not in any way in the right position to speak on behalf of the Association. He is not a member of the executive council; neither is he the chairman in Benue State, nor a coordinator of the Miyetti Allah. If we discover he is parading himself as either chairman or coordinator, we will definitely write the security agencies to arrest him for impersonation, because Miyetti Allah is a registered and respected democratic association and has respected traditional rulers as chairmen and Board of Trustee members. Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association is not out for joke, all the members must be serious, so people like Gololo must be sanctioned. Miyetti Allah as a body is a non-political, non-religious, charitable organisation established for the interest of livestock breeders in the country. We don’t want a situation where the association will be brought into politics, because that will cause a lot of confusion.

Several times when there are killings in the country, accusing fingers are pointed at Miyetti Allah and Fulani herdsmen, how do you react to this?

Some of the media houses sometimes do these things deliberately. Before you take a story to the public, as far as the ethics of journalism is concerned, I think you have to balance the story. But most of the times, we see stories going to the public without being properly investigated, so we feel that because Buhari [President Muhammadu Buhari] is a Fulani man and he has cows, when his political opponents want to fight him, they mention the name of the herdsmen or the Miyetti Allah. Today, we have become a battle ground for politicians; we have become victims of circumstances in the hands of politicians because of the president being one of us and he has cows.

These things that are going round in the media, most of them are not the truth; some of the media houses don’t balance the storiesnd they don’t even investigate properly. They just jump into conclusion and say it is the Fulani herdsmen or the Miyetti Allah, who did this and that. We are never a party and we will not be a party to criminality, we don’t condone crime; we don’t support it, and not every pastoralist in Nigeria is a member of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association. There are a lot of pastoralist associations in the country and they all have their members, including the Fulanis, so we represent registered members of this association, so when we are speaking, we speak mainly for our members and our members are the peace-loving ones going round doing their legitimate business. They carry at most sticks or maybe, cutlasses; these are the pastoralists that represent the Miyetti Allah, and mind you, MACBAN has been in existence for 32 years now. It was registered in February 1986.

There were instances where criminals were caught in Fulani attires, but after investigations, it was discovered that they were not Fulanis. So, today, criminals put on Fulani attires and perpetrate crime so that it would be seen as if it was perpetrated by herdsmen. This is what we have been going through in the country. Most of the crises that you see are politically-motivated; politicians have used tribalism and religion to achieve their selfish aims. Sometimes, they even use criminality to achieve what they want to achieve by creating a problem. It is really surprising that the contemporary politicians are playing politics with human lives, it is really unfortunate.

Before the inception of this administration, the crisis was never as it is today, the relationship between the farmers and the pastoralists is like the relationship between the tongue and the teeth, they coexist together. They fight, reconcile, continue to live together. We have been having crisis even before the coming of this administration, but it has never been the way it is today. Immediately this administration came in, the crisis took a political dimension; religion was brought into it, tribalism was brought into it, sometimes even criminality was brought into it.

People can bear me witness that the crisis in Plateau State started in 2002 as either a tribal or ethnic conflict, but today, it is given the coloration of farmers and herdsmen crisis, meanwhile it is not. The crisis in Southern Kaduna has been there as a religious and tribal crisis, but today, it is being given the coloration of herdsmen or pastoralist crisis simply because politicians want to use it for their own selfish aims.

What a lot of people don’t know is that the pastoralists are the worst affected in the crises; about two million cows were lost as a result of cattle rustling and who are the owners of the cows? They are the pastoralists; they are not spared by kidnappers; so today, we are both victims and culprits, because the pastoralists are the worst kidnapped. Before you kidnap one personality in the city, about 20 of the pastoralists have been kidnapped in the forest on a daily basis. They sell their cows, and pay ransom quietly for them to continue living where they are living, because they are living in a vulnerable place open to attacks.

Your association appears to be opposed to the anti-open grazing laws in some states. What do you make of the situation of things in Benue, Taraba and Ekiti states, where the laws to control grazing have been enacted?

The situation in Benue is still what it used to be, because nothing changed. The little change that is noticed is that all the pastoralists were chased out of Tiv-dominated areas; they no longer live there. But today, even those pastoralists that are living in Nasarawa State are not spared; they have been attacked. The only place you find a pastoralist living in Benue State is the Idoma and the Agatu-dominated areas, because these areas are living with their pastoralists up till now, as they refused to recognise the anti-open grazing law.

We have problem with the law because right from the outset, we knew it was not well-intended. On the eve of the implementation of the law, we were invited by the governor [Samuel Ortom]; we went to Benue and we had a general stakeholders’ meeting when he told us he was going to implement that law. The way the law was made, we were not carried along, because we were not invited for the public hearing. If you are doing something that is as sensitive as that law, at least you have to draw the attention of all the affected persons and our members are the major persons that would be affected by the law, we were not in any way contacted. When we were invited on the eve of the implementation, we told the governor our mind; we said there were some gray areas and that we had to have a look at those gray areas if the state wants the law to work.

But the way it was done, we feel it was deliberately done to send the Fulanis out of Benue State and this is what is happening today. Even from the title of the law, one would know that the implementation was done wrongly. The title of the law says, Open Grazing Prohibition Ranching Establishment Law. Two things are involved here: open grazing prohibition and ranching establishment. Considering the title, one will assume that the intention of the law was to ensure that maybe, either the ranching should come first before prohibition or the two would be taking place at the same time, but what we see in Benue was the implementation without the ranching. So, even from the title and the implementation, one will know clearly that the law was made to alienate the Fulanis from Benue and they have almost succeeded, because there is no pastoralist today in the entire Tiv-dominated areas in Benue. But has that brought an end to the conflict? All these are politically-motivated things; the governor intended to use the law to achieve his political aims. His intention was not for the law to work for the interest of both parties.

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In Taraba, we thank God that the governor [Darius Ishaku] was quick to suspend the law; so it has been suspended. It is put under review now; he has constituted a committee to review it and see how it will work.

Ekiti has a similar law, but we have no problem with the law in Ekiti; it has a complete human face. Governor Ayo Fayose had to designate an area for the pastoralists before he even implemented the law. Ekiti State has no grazing reserves, but the governor said all the pastoralists could go and stay in the game reserves and be paying N5,000 annually to the local governments, where they stay and this is what they are doing. And the law was intended to sanction the first offender; whoever that offends first, either he is a pastoralist or a farmer must be punished accordingly. If a farmer kills a pastoralist’s cow, he will have to pay for the cow and go to prison and if a pastoralist grazes into a farm, he has to pay for the damages on the farmland and go to prison; the first offender is going to be punished by the law. The governor has confined them to an area and that is why you see a relative peace in Ekiti State. The law also bans night grazing and we in Miyetti Allah do not encourage night grazing and we don’t encourage grazing by minors, because that is what is causing the entire confusion. The Ekiti law prohibited grazing by minors, it prohibited night grazing, it sanctioned the first offender and it confined the pastoralists to an area where they will be grazing. That was even before he implemented the law and that is why the law is working in Ekiti without a problem. Since then, there has never been a problem up till today because the law has a human face.

You stated that your members are often victims of kidnapping and cattle rustling. Are you satisfied with the security measures put in place by the Federal Government to curb cattle rustling?

We have to praise the Federal Government for stepping up to check the menace of cattle rustlers and kidnappers. It is working and you can see the relative peace in Zamfara. It is the same group of cattle rustlers that has migrated to kidnapping, but the one in Zamfara is clear banditry. They go to ransack an entire village, kill people, and on their way if they see a Fulani man with cows, they rustle the cows and go away with them. It is pure criminality, so we have to thank the Federal Government for the efforts; it is yielding results already. For how long have you not heard of killing in Zamfara since this operation started? There has never been any report of killing in Zamfara, so, the Federal Government is doing its best and we know it is doing its best even in the area of the grazing reserves maintenance. The government is doing a lot, only that the state governors in the northern part of the country are not putting in the same effort, as Federal Government. If they are putting in the same effort as the Federal Government, this crisis wouldn’t be at the level it is today. But the northern state governors don’t seem to accept this issue of development of grazing reserves as their own responsibility; they feel it’s entirely the responsibility of the Federal Government. However, the Federal Government’s hands are tied because it has no land, the state governments are the custodians of lands, state governments are the custodians of education, they are the custodians of security in their states, so, the state governments have a lot to do on the welfare of pastoralists in their states. But mark me, go and check the state ministries of agriculture’s budget in the entire northern states, under the agriculture sector, go and check livestock and see if there is anything at all budgeted for livestock.

How do you think the crisis between farmers and herdsmen could be put to an end?

Initially, it was a resource-based crisis: today because of the dimension the crisis has taken, whatever solution that is going to be proffered, it has to be a holistic one; it has to carry along all the aspects of the crisis. The proffered solution has to bring a solution to these issues of grazing reserves and cattle routes, it has to come up with a solution towards checking the menace of criminality, cattle rustling and kidnapping. It has to come up with a model on how to educate the pastoralists by engaging them in the decision on how their children can be educated. All these aspects of the crisis has to be addressed the same time, the religious, the tribal, the education and value aspects of the crisis all have to be addressed at the same time.

So, the approach today, because of the dimension the crisis has taken, has to be holistic. On the issue of grazing reserves, all that we are saying in Miyetti Allah is that we have 415 of them spread across the northern part of the country, covering an area of about five million hectares of land, let’s identify these grazing reserves, let’s assess them, let’s know their current status. If they are encroached by farmers, let’s know the level of encroachment, if there are infrastructure in them because most of them have infrastructure of dams, nomadic schools, veterinary clinics, they all have them, most of them have these infrastructure in them, let’s assess the status of these infrastructures. It is when we identify, we assess, we know the current status, then let’s begin to develop them, what do they need? The pastoralists’ requirements are just water and grass; the main requirement is water, if there is water in the land, the grass will be developed. Provide water, most of the dams are silted, make them useful for the pastoralists, cows require water, they can survive without food for more than a week, 10 days or more, but they cannot survive without water for three days, so water is the main requirement. Let the state governments make the grazing reserves attractive for pastoralists; if there is water and grass, they will definitely come and stay, it is when we get them in their large numbers then we begin to improve their skills, begin to showcase the model of ranching you want to introduce to them into and begin to teach them what 50 cows can do for them that 300 cows cannot do.

When it comes to the ranching, engage the services of professionals, let them come up with a ranching model that will suit the peculiarity of the pastoralists we have in the country. We have unskilled, untrained pastoralists who are still practising the primitive way of animal husbandry, who are still maintaining outdated species of cows that give a maximum of three litres of milk per cow daily and give a maximum of may be 100kg of meat against an exotic breed that we have today in the world that gives about 600kg of meat and maybe 30 to 50 litres of milk per cow. So, you can come up with a model of ranch because to the pastoralists we have in the country, cow is not only for economic purpose, they don’t keep cows because they want to fatten them and all tomorrow to make profit, to them, cow is a symbol of prestige, because your essence in the society you live is being gauged by the number of cows you have. So, the multiplication of the cow, the quantity is more important to them than the quality. Unless you come with a model that takes into consideration all these multiple functions of the cow to the average pastoralists we have in the country, the model that only considers cow for economic purpose will not work. So, considering this, let the professionals know the peculiarities of the pastoralists, let them design a ranching model that will suit these peculiarities; this is all we are saying as far as Miyetti Allah is concerned.

On the other issues of politics, that is for the government to come up with ways on how to tackle these things, the issues of security is also for the security agencies, authorities to come up with ways on how they will deal with the situation, they are almost succeeding now because they are doing their best as far as we are concerned.