Ruga settlements arrangement destined to fail —Expert

An agriculturist, Professor Dennis Odionyenfo Balogun, has blamed the Federal Government for the recent controversies generated by the Ruga settlements programme for Fulani Herdsmen as proposed by the government and its total rejection by the people and some state governments in the southern parts of the country and some parts of the North Central geopolitical zone.

He noted that government might have meant well for the entire Nigerian citizens because of the issue of safety of foods and the national security issues in the country, but positedthat the terminology used by the federal government and an attempt to politicise the programme might have been responsible for its rejection by some sections of the country, which has led to the suspension of the programme by the federal government.

Professor Balogu, who is also the Dean of Applied Sciences and Technology, at the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Niger State, said: “Ruga  settlement of ranches is another way of developing another system whereby it would solve the problems of the cattle herders from roaming around the country with their livestock and I think that is a welcome development but I think the problem that we are having here is the terminology, semantics that are trying to tear our people apart or tear our people down”.

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He added that when the federal government said Ruga Settlement belonged to one section of the country that the other sections of the country have the right to ask the government that what about their own businesses too, noting  that that was the issue, as well as the way it was being handled by the Presidency at the time.

He said, “talking about Ruga farm or Ruga settlement, the way it was being handled by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, somebody said the Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo was in charge of it, but his office came out to say that he was not the one in charge of it. But it is in the overall interests of every Nigerian to be able to separate both the safety of food and national security issues, as well as the political aspect of it which is the problem the country is facing at the moment because the issue of cattle rearing by herdsmen and the farmlands to the crop farmers is a burning issue and of advantage to us as a people.

Balogun stated further that the country was blessed with the Fulani, as well as the Yorubas, Igbos and others that God has created to come together and the rest of the ethnic groups in the country to produce food crops, technology, opportunities, marketing and commercials and everyone that makes Nigeria an attractive place to stay.

Accordingly, he said, the Fulani herdsmen are doing a lot of work for us and we don’t want to remove that and the issue of animal foods that the country has had any problems in that area. But we have had problems with the rice production whereby we are buying rice from other countries and we have had problems with the production of Apples, that is why we have been buying Apples and other food crops from elsewhere and even beyond the shores  of Nigeria.

He further argued that because of the efforts that  these Fulani Herdsmen put in place, that majority of the Nigerian citizenry have been able to have enough meats which was part of the people’s essential diets that has made everyone looked very healthy, otherwise he said you would have been seen a lot of Malnutrition on the people on the roads actually.

“And I think we cannot remove that from a people that have been trying to work very hard to sustain the country and her people in the areas of animal foods production and we aught to look at  their concerns and let us not lose focus or be sentimental about it and see how their pronlems can be addressed, but non politically.

“Similarly, also.those the people that produced food crops such as the other types of foods like Yam, Cassava, Soya Beans, Onions, Vegetables, Locust Beans, among others and their concerns too. And we should be able to make sure that both of them are married together because the issue of Herdsmen with what they are burning to want is the same thing that the people with the food crops are burning to have too. In fact, they both do not have pronlems and in most countries of the world, most of them should have been staying together in fighting for a common purpose But right from the word go, or about 10 years ago, the successive governments in Nigeria have not done their homework in understanding this system”, he maintained.

Prof. Balogu pointed out that some of the lines of divide between the Cattle Farmers and their counterparts Crops Farmers was such that they lived peacefully in the past but in the recent times, they had been narrowed by the building of development structures such as the building of new roads, Houses, new Universities among other developmental structures  across the country without paying respect to the fact that there are tracks which the Cattle followed in respect that if you closed those tracks, the Cattle will find another tracks which sometimes leads them to another persons farmlands.

According to him, in the past the Catle  Herdsmen have been doing this, walking on their tracks and if they get into the farms, the farmer raised the alarm and the Herders paid some ramifications for it, but conceded that in these days, the ramifications paid by the Herders were such that have become too much for them and they have not been able to pay, saying this is the whole problem the country is grappling with at the moment.

He however declared that northern Nigeria alone does not need the Southern parts of the country in producing forage in space, to get enough Cattle to feed the country or the whole of West African Sub region, arguing that about 79 percent of  Hectares of land in Nigeria is in the northern Nigerian, while the remaining 21percent Hectares of land  is in the Southern Nigeria.

He added that now what has happened in the northern Nigeria was the problem of overgrazing land, or what he described as unmanaged grazing, stressing that the federal government had in the past did a lot to train a lot of people, but pointed out that these people trained by the government did not come back to do the work they were trained to do or the work they went to learn .

“So, what we are doing is that overgrazing goes to the far north , the whole grasses are gone, it has been reduced to small grasslands and the Herders moved more Southerly and they also moved to the Centre of Nigeria where  grasses are growing and they are.moving to the Southern parts of the country.

“If they didn’t do like that, they would have desertification and encroached down even to the Niger Delta region of the country. The issue that we have had is that over the years, is that what can the federal government do to get the people that knows  this work to develop farming, developing a pasture land , developed farmers that produced grass for  the Cattle because it is being done everywhere across the world.

“We do have the knowhow and we can do it so  that the people are producing much more meat  for their population. We need to  manage Cattle as a business but not like the way the Herders  that just roams about the country. And if we do it, we would be seeing the Herdsmen being the richest group in Nigeria because everybody eats meat and even those that are not eating meat are going to school so that they can eat more meat. So, that is the issue”, he concluded.