Grazing bill : An Invitation to Danger

The National Assembly is about to pass a Bill that is set to kill whatever is left of our so-called over-centralised federal system. The Bill if passed will be the greatest rape on our democracy and the biggest insult on our collective sensitivity as a people and as a country. “The Fulani National Grazing Reserve,” is currently before the National Assembly. The bill has successfully scaled through second reading in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. For it to become law, it is to pass through the third reading.

“The bill seeks to provide for the establishment of national grazing reserves and stock routes. It is sponsored by Senator Zainab Kure. “The Bill proposes to establish a National Grazing Reserve Commission (NGRC) for the country. The NGRC will be charged with the responsibility of using funds received from the Federal Government to forcefully acquire farmlands from Nigerians in all the 36 states of the country, develop same at government expense through the provision of bore holes, water reservoirs, etc; for the exclusive use of nomadic cattle rearers.”

The issue here is very clear. Fulani herdsmen are cattle farmers. They could as well keep their cattle in ranches. They could devise whatever means like their counterparts in Argentina, Australia and the rest of the civilised world to do their animal husbandry. The men and boys roaming the streets, roads and bushes driving cattle are not the owners of these animals. They are just employees, labourers, attendants or whatever name they are called.

The owners of these cows like Generals Obasanjo, Nyako, Abdulsalami Abubakar and our President Buhari are big time farmers. They are businessmen. It is immoral to ask taxpayers to finance the operations of these businesses. Cattle owners must provide capital through bank loans or whatever means to create their grazing lands in their localities. The cows are not owned by the Federal Government.

Just as the Federal Government is not creating farm lands for cocoa and kolanut farmers in Sokoto or Katsina, or creating farm lands for Agatu yam farmers in Enugu or Maiduguri, or creating special areas for fish farming in Zungeru, it cannot for any reason ever consider creating special lands for herdsmen for grazing. Let the herdsmen run their business without encroaching on the lands of other people. Let the cattle owners buy into the Fodder technology and other modern methods of providing feeds for their animals without roaming the streets and plundering other people’s farms.

To ever dream of this perverted Bill is to step on the toes of other Nigerians and step on sore foot, and by so doing create a dangerous precedent. Nobody should play ethnic game here. This is not an issue directed against any ethnic nationality in Nigeria. The simple matter is to let those who trade in cattle fund their business like all other businesses, including farming, in Nigeria. The Bill must not see the light of the day. The sponsors want to create serious problem in the polity and their design must be nipped in the bud.

The Nigerian Bar Association, the Coalition of Civil Societies, and all those who care about the continued existence of this troubled country must rise up to strongly oppose and kill this obnoxious and self serving Bill. It beats my imagination that members of the National Assembly did not see the serious danger posed by this corrosive Bill.

In a reaction to the threats posed by this obnoxious Bill, the National Co-ordinator of the Oodua Peoples Congress, Otunba Gani Adams says: “Without any doubt, this is a very dangerous proposal for Nigeria. We all have seen how the Fulani herdsmen kill and maim members of the community where they graze their cattle without the backing of any law. I am sure that we can only imagine what their attitudes would be if the supposed grazing reserves are forcefully taken over by government and handed over to the herdsmen. Nigeria has enough problem.

By
Otunba Tola Adeniyi

OP, you are so on point! How come our lawmakers didn't think along these lines?

This is not an attack on any ethnic group or group of persons, but a sound economic analysis of the situation.

Apart from turning a blind eye to the nefarious actvities of these herdsmen, government now wants to deploy my tax contribution (which they plan to increase any time soon), to a project that will not only mean more money for the cattle businessmen, but also promises to rob poor villagers of their ancestral properties.

Even if government plans to compensate these villagers for their lands taken, we all know how poorly priced these properties will be when the powers that be want them!

In trying to solve a problem, this government plans to create a hydra-headed one if they continue with this!
Ranching is the way forward still.

This is just a time bomb waiting to happen! - A decade atmost!

Why support archaic nomadic ways in this age with tax payers money, shouldn't the owners of livestocks be responsible for how they are fed. Now how do you curtail this onslaught of innocent farmers who consider this livestocks as pests to their farms products.

And to think this has passed the second hearing at both senate and HOR.
Why do these people keep making me think they're all retards, i'm still trying to understand this correlation between this lagos-calabar rail and keke napep issue and Gbam I come across this

If southern senators allow that bill to be passed fire and brimstone will befall them and their family members.

The billionaires owners of those cows like Buhari, Abdulsalam, IBB and other fulanis can keep bribing all the senators and HOR to pass that bill so that they can get free lands in the south. But one thing is certain, if that bill scales through, No southern senator or MHOR (espcially SS/SE) will go scot free for trading their people's land for useless political relevance and bribe. Nothing will save them!

The Igbo trader works hard to earn and pay for his land, you have not deemed it fit to give him 'trading reserves', the billionaire fulani cow owners should freely have southern land as 'grazing reserves'? because they are using violence as blackmail? May God punish you all if that bill ever becomes law!