Grazing reserves: Ortom, Afenifere slam Buhari

*President turning Nigeria to cow republic, says Benue gov

*Approval a waste of taxpayers’ money, sweet pipe dream — Afenifere

Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom and the Pan Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, on Friday, berated President Muhammadu Buhari over his swift approval of recommendations of a committee to review 368 grazing sites across 25 states in the country.

While the Benue State governor warned President Buhari against turning Nigeria into a cow republic with the approval for recovery of the grazing sites, the Yoruba socio-political group described the approval as not only a waste of tax-payers money but a sweet pipe dream in a fool’s paradise.

The Daily Times recalls that the Presidency on Thursday disclosed that President Buhari had given approval for the review, with dispatch, of 368 Grazing Reserves across 25 states in the country to determine the levels of encroachment.

Governor Ortom, who was reacting to the statement from the Presidency, said that with the latest move, it was crystal clear that the president is planning to plunge the country into crisis.

Gov Ortom in the statement issued and signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Terver Akase, on Friday, titled, ‘Presidency turning Nigeria to a cow republic,’ said that the present regime had placed more priority on the welfare of cattle than the people that voted him into office.

The statement reads: “In a country where insecurity has reached an all-time high with hundreds being killed by armed herdsmen, bandits, and other terrorists, the Presidency is only bordered about animals and their safety and is deploying all machinery and arsenals of government to impose grazing reserves and cattle routes on Nigerians. This is unacceptable!

“The Buhari administration has turned a blind eye to the unimaginable levels of encroachment on lands belonging to Nigerians by cattle.

Mr President has never come out even once to condemn activities of herdsmen and the attacks they visit on innocent people. The only time the President is heard speaking about atrocities of the herders is when he defends them.

“It is now clear that the Presidency wants to plunge the country into avoidable crisis. Otherwise, what is the justification for President Buhari’s insistence that grazing reserves be established across the country when Nigerians have openly kicked against the policy and have embraced ranching in place of open grazing?”

Also reacting, the pan Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, described the approval given by President Muhammadu Buhari to review grazing reserves in some states as not only a waste of taxpayers’ money but a sweet pipe dream in a fool’s paradise.

In a statement in Akure, the Ondo State capital, signed by its General Secretary, Chief Sola Ebiseni, the Yoruba socio-political group, lamented that the President was “wasting taxpayers scarce resources on a programme which conception lacks all conceivable growth capacity.

The statement reads: ”The approval by President Muhammadu Buhari to review, with dispatch, 368 Grazing Reserves across allegedly 25 states in the country to determine the levels of encroachment did not surprise Nigerians.

“It does not also matter that having felt the pulse of the nation in his interview with the Arise television in June, the President is still wasting taxpayers’ scarce resources on a programme whose conception lacks all conceivable growth capacity.

“It is instructive that the recommending and implementation Committee is headed by Professor Ibrahim Gambari, the Chief of Staff to the President who, in conjunction with Professor Attahiru Jega, during the first term of Buhari, presented a “Memorandum On Pastoralist-Farmers’ Conflicts And the search for peaceful Resolution” published in January 2018, which contained the same recommendations now being foisted on the nation.

“They have submitted, among other recommendations that “it is clear that Nigeria and indeed Africa have to plan towards the transformation of pastoralism into settled forms of animal husbandry.

“The establishment of grazing reserves provides the opportunity for practising a more limited form of pastoralism and is, therefore, a pathway towards a more settled form of animal husbandry.

“Grazing reserves are areas of land demarcated, set aside and reserved for exclusive or semi-exclusive use by pastoralists. Currently, Nigeria has a total of 417 grazing reserves all over the country, out of which only about 113 have been gazetted”.

“Thus, the present policy of the Buhari administration on Grazing Reserves is the implementation of the script by the Fulani intelligentsia.

“The recommendations which pandered to deceptive national solutions to orchestrated farmers/herders clash, nonetheless reek of the odiferous stench of ethnic agenda for settlement of the Fulani in the ancestral lands of other ethnic nationalities.

“The non-Fulani Nigerians are not stupid, as the Federal Government, probably imagine, not to know that the concept of Grazing Reserve, by the Gambari and Jega definitions above, is a worse form of official dispossession of their ancestral lands for the inheritance and use of the Fulani than Cattle Colony, RUGA and Grazing Routes which they have roundly rejected.

“We recall and support the Resolutions of the Nigerian Governors, particularly from the South of the country, banning all forms of open grazing and it does not matter to us that some elected governors, in a federation, would condescend so low to function as members of a Committee presided over by an appointed aide of the President, no matter the name in which his office is painted.

“The concept of Grazing Reserves, otherwise known as Hurumi, which was introduced during the colonial and immediately after independence failed in the north particularly in the Middle Belt provinces, notwithstanding a monolithic one North government and permissive land-use regime.

“For the umpteenth time, let the President be told that the constitution which he reveres relentlessly and the Land Use Act which derives equal force therefrom, extols the majesty of the people over their land.

“Even the Governor who holds the land in his State in trust for the people cannot dispossess any citizen thereof, except for proven overriding public interest through the due process of law.

“The current exercise is not only a waste of taxpayers’ money, but it is also a sweet pipe dream in a fool’s paradise. Every herder has a State of origin.

The group said that “Let the governments of the respective states make arrangements for settled life for them in the territory where the culture is fully appreciated”.