Terrorism Allegation: We are businessmen, not terrorists —Miyetti Allah president

Following the recent Bill introduced in the United States Congress seeking to designate Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN) as a terrorist organisation, the National President of the Association, Baba Othman Ngelzarma, in this interview, speaks on the terrorism allegation, the efforts of the association to broker peace in communities, among others. COLLINS NNABUIFE brings excerpts.

RECENTLY, the US Congress introduced a bill to designate MACBAN as a terrorist organisation, what is your reaction to that?

 My reaction to this is we are completely and denying this on the basis that we are never a terrorist group or a criminal organization. We will never be one, because this is an association that has been in existence for over 40 years now. It was registered on the 12th of February 1986 as a non-violent, non-religious organization whose mandate is to see the development of the livestock sector of the economy in the country. So the association was established to protect the interests of Cattle Breeders, irrespective of their religion or tribal affiliation, because it is more of a trade group that is established to see to development of the livestock sector and to see to peace building between farmers and herders. These are our core responsibilities, building peace, livestock development and then protecting the interest of Cattle Breeders, whoever they are, or what tribe or religions they belong to. Once you agree to pick our membership card as a cattle breeder, and you have satisfied passing through our scrutiny, then you automatically become our member. So based on this, we are really surprised that the American Congress is still insisting on including our name into any form of sanction, because we are never a faceless group. This is a group that has offices in all the 36 states of the Federation and at the national level and all the local government levels where you can find pastoralists, and our activities are not hidden. Our activities are always open, and it’s not an armed group. And we have never supported or taken responsibility for any criminality, and we have never represented any criminal, and we have never supported, aided or abated any form of criminality. In fact, because of the effort of our leaders in working with the security to combat crime in their respective states, this had cost a lot of their lives. I have a typical example in 2025 where the chairman of Katsina and that of Kwara were killed in their houses by bandits who would believe to be the Fulani Bandits, the one of Katsina, has been killed in his house. His wife, his two wives and one daughter, were taken and kept as captive for nearly eight months, until a ransom of N10 million was paid before they were released. So and not only that, we have been working with the government at the national level, at the state and local government levels, to broker peace between farmers and herders to see how the livestock sub-sector can be developed. And this can be testified in so many ways. We are a part of the committee that brought about the National Livestock transformation plan document that was used during the Buhari administration. And we are also part of the livestock transformation committee under the chairmanship of Professor Attahiru Jega,  where we develop a document that brought about the emergence of the livestock Development Ministry today. So we have been engaging with the government, and we have been engaging with not only the government, we have been engaging with a lot of international communities in our efforts to broker peace between farmers and the herders, and in our effort to see transformation in the livestock sub sector for the benefit of the entire public and for the benefit of the practitioners as well. So, considering what we have been doing over the years, it becomes a very big surprise for us if we can be included for any sanction by the American Congress. I think there is a communication gap. I think there is a misunderstanding of what MACBAN stands for. So it is this misunderstanding that we wanted it to be corrected by the federal government, because the Nigerian government knows us, knows our existence, knows what we do, knows that we are a legitimate group, knows that we operate within the ambits of the law, knows that we are never a violent Association, knows that We are a peaceful Association who is working to ensure peace between farmers and the herders. And we have extended on several times our hands of fellowship to a lot of other organizations, in fact, including the Christian Association of Nigeria, at one time, we had visited their headquarters, we have had interactions with their national leaderships some years back, we have even extended our hands for fellowship to the Ohanaeze Ndigbo in the south east. And just last two years, we signed a peace pact in Ibadan with the commodity group association in the south-western part of the country. So our activities are very clear. We are not a faceless group. Our activities are very clear for everybody to see. Our records are there for everybody to come and see. So linking us with terrorism is to say the least injustice, because we are never a criminal group, considering our antecedents, considering what we do. So, and moreover, when the report first came, I think, was in November or December, we developed a comprehensive report backing our position as a non-violent Association. Now we have submitted the same report to the American Congress through the American ambassador here in Nigeria for onward transmission to the American Congress so that they can see and understand what we stand for. And in that document, we went to the extent of showing them we are also victims of what is going on in the country. We are victims of cattle rustling, because 95% of the cattle ownership in the country belongs to our members. So wherever you hear cattle rustling, it must have been rustled from a harder word, maybe our member or a member of one of the pastoralist groups. We have about 25 to 30 other pastoralist groups in the country that also have members from within the pastoralist. We are not the only pastoralist group in the country. There are a lot of other associations that also have members, and those members, they have families, and those families are citizens of Nigeria who pay their taxes, bona fide citizens. We have members who pay their taxes. So we submitted a comprehensive report, defending our position as a non violent Association. We have even sent a lot of photocopied a lot of letters, and included in that report showing our interaction with the government at different level, our interaction with the international community at different levels, some of our activities, because in some states, where we feel has a security problem, before we allow somebody to contest election as our leader, he has to undergo scrutiny from the DSS and the police and the security before we even allow somebody to contest on our platform, we have similar letters indicating that we have sought for clearance for some candidates before we even allow them to contest election under our platform, fearing that we don’t want to include criminals among us, we are doing our best to ensure that we don’t include criminals in our fold, but criminals can be found anywhere. They can be found in the military. They can be found by the police. But we don’t take responsibility for whoever is a criminal; if you are a criminal, you are on your own, because we don’t represent any criminal. This is what the Association stands for. So this is our position, and this is what we will continue to defend. We are not a terrorist group, and we cannot be one. So the American Congress as a civilised body must try to justify its submission by hearing from the other side. Because if somebody is alleging us to be something at least, we deserve to be heard. Our side of the story deserves to be well understood before somebody can include us in this very dangerous position as a terrorist organization, because we are not one, and we will never be one, as far as we are concerned. And most importantly, the leadership of the association always comes through an election that is normally conducted after every four years. So after a four-year tenure, you have to recontest if you are eligible to the contest before you will be elected into the position of the association. And mind you, within our fold as leaders, we have doctors, we have engineers, we have all sort of academics, professionals who are respected citizens of this country who only joined the association to contribute their quota in seeing how the livestock production system can be transformed on how we can see the movement from the primitive system of animal husbandry to a modernized system of animal husbandry on how we can settle the pastoralist in one place so that this issue of continuous farm destruction that is bringing about fight can be stopped. But we are never a criminal group, and we have never supported, condoned, or upheld any criminal in our fold.

On many occasions, some criminal activities in the country have been linked to Fulani herdsmen, do you think that it is this kind of profiling that is bringing this bad name to MACBAN?

 Well, first of all, the reason why whatever happens among the pastoralists, Miyetti Allah always comes to mind is because it is the pioneer, it is the oldest pastoralist group that was registered 40 years back. All the others that came after it were just registered some 10, 15, 20 years back. So the only group that is well known to everybody in Nigeria is the MACBAN, because it’s the oldest, and it was the only one that has been operating before the emergence of the subsequent ones that also came up to join pastoralist associations. So this is the reason why, whenever something happens. The only group people know is our own, but not every herder, as I said, is our member. And the reason why there is this continuous farm destruction is nothing other than the increase in the population, before the population was manageable, there was abundance of everything. So farmers have enough land to farm. Herders have free land to graze. So, no problem, but today, because of the increase in the population, land is becoming limited. The burden of land is always becoming too much. So the competition on land is always becoming too stiff. Farmers are looking for farmlands. Pastoralists are looking for grazing areas. Coupled with this is the effect of climate change that is affecting most of the northern part of the country, moving at the rate of 2.5 kilometers after every year, the Sahara is encroaching fast into the hinterland by 2.5 kilometers every year. So this is affecting most of the grazing areas in the northern part of the country. This is affecting much of the watering points in the northern part of the country, where the pastoralist go to, where the animals go to take water and go to do free grazing, because the type of pastoralist that we have in the country are those that are still practicing the primitive system of animal husbandry, roaming the wild, looking for free pasture as only options they have to do to survive because they don’t know anything. And free grazing areas are no longer available because of the increase in population and the effects of climate change. So this is what is also forcing them from the northern part of the country, where it is very much affected by effects of the climate change, to far to further into the hinterland, where they could find water and pasture for the herds. And in the southern part of the country, the land tenure system is not the same as It is in the northern part of the country. In the north, the land belongs to the public and the government, while in the south, the land belongs to communities. So there is no free land in the southern part of the country. So if you go to graze in an open area, thinking that it is nobody’s land, you may come to realize that the community owns that particular land. Before you push your animals into that land, you have to seek the permission of the community before you will be allowed to go in and graze not only in the farmlands, even in the free areas where you find no farmland you think it’s a clear area you can graze, it belongs to some people, so but in the north the land is free. Once, it is not farmland, it is a free land for the herder to come and graze his cow and water his cow and go. But in the southern part, it is not the same. So this is what is bringing about the misunderstanding and the conflict. In those days, the communication link between the Commerce and the headers was excellent, but today, the communication link is distorted. It’s replaced by suspicion, mistrust.

What steps will you take to correct these impressions about MACBAN?

 Will continue to put pressure. We’ll continue to engage the media. We’ll continue to engage all the relevant authorities, the federal government, the state governments, their agencies, federal ministry of foreign affairs, the Office of the NSA, the Senate President, the speaker House of Reps, and the American Embassy and all the other foreign embassies we have in Nigeria will continue to interact with them. Will continue to push our case further, so that it will run into the relevant ears that we want them to hear about us, because we cannot afford to sponsor ourselves to go to the American Congress, but we’ll push through you people, the media and The government agencies and that much that we can do is nothing either than to pressurize the federal government, to reach out to their counterparts in the American government, to advance further our course, to tell them this is what MACBAN stands for. We know MACBAN. We have been dealing with MACBAN. We have been working with MACBAN. As far as we are concerned, MACBAN is never a criminal group. If there are some criminal groups within MACBAN, they should be dealt with in their individual capacity, because we cannot hold brief for any individual criminal who turns out to be a criminal within our fold, because we don’t represent them, we don’t speak for them. And criminality doesn’t show on somebody’s face for you to see somebody and say, You are a criminal, I’m not going to deal with you. We have them. They can be found in the military, they can be found in the police, they can be found in the public service and everywhere. So, but we are doing our best, we have been taking measures to make sure that we don’t work with criminals, that we don’t stand for criminals. So what we will continue to do is to put pressure on our government in Nigeria, to insist that they should advance our course to the American legislator, let them know who we are, because this is what we will continue to do until when we take our names out of that list, because we are not supposed to be there.

 How do you address criminals or criminality when reported to your association, or when your association investigates an act and they find one of your members wanting, how do you address it?

Our Constitution is there for penalties. We have a clause that says this is the penalty for each and every member that has committed one form of constitutional breach or the other. If we find out somebody is a criminal, we have stages. We’ll do an investigation. We’ll give him fair hearing. We’ll do an investigation. Once we are satisfied he is one, we either suspend him, expel him, or strip him off his position. If he has a position in the association, we’ll remove him from that position, depending on the gravity of the offense he has committed. We operate as civilized people, because we are one. So our constitution is there for any type of penalty associated with any particular form of offense or crime somebody has committed. But one thing that we don’t tolerate if we confirm you are a criminal, expulsion, not even if you are an executive member of the association, not even striping you off your position. We will also expel you from the association outrightly. We’ll tell you to go, you are a criminal, and sometimes, when we feel you are one, we’ll write the security, another security to investigate you because we feel you are one. The reason why some of our leaders here at the local government levels have lost their lives is because they have been working with the security to fish out criminals among us. This is the reason why the chairman of Kwara was killed last year. He was followed to his house and shot on the head, his head was battered to death, and his offense is he has organized a volunteer group that is working with the security to go after the criminals, to go after the Fulani bandits, to go after those criminals in the forest. So that cost him his life. They followed him to his house and killed him. And the reason why the Katsina state chapter Chairman also was assassinated and his two wife second as captives was because he has been assisting the security in fishing out the criminals in Katsina state, so when the criminals realized that, they came to his house and killed him and took away two of his wives, until when N10 million was paid as ransom and two motorcycle, before his one wife and the daughter can be released, and even the local government chairman of Barkin Ladi in Plateau said was also killed, his offense was he has met with the army, the police. He was invited to a security meeting in the local government headquarters. He attended the security meeting with the security officers at local government level, with the local government chairman and the representative of the police, army, DSS and the rest. After that, he was followed to his house in the night and assassinated because he met with the security, so they feel maybe he’s exposing them, or he’s going to expose them. That was the reason why they killed him. So our members have been paying dearly because they are working to assist the security in picking out criminals among the pastoralists. So that is what cost them their lives. So, despite the risk, we are working, wherever we feel somebody is a criminal, will report him to the right authority, and we will make sure that appropriate measures are taken against him, and we will expel him from our association, because we are not criminals like you.