Despite public outcry against the proposed recovery of grazing routes in the country, on Thursday, August 19, 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari, announced the approval of 368 grazing routes in 25 states. The approval, the President said, followed the recommendations of a committee set up to review “with dispatch” 368 grazing sites in 25 states to determine the levels of encroachment.
It would be recalled that on May 11, 2021, 17 governors of the southern states proscribed open grazing due to public outcry on the atrocities being perpetrated by herders.
In a sharp response to this initiative, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN (AGF), condemned the governors’ decision and compared open grazing to spare parts trading in the northern parts of the country by mostly Igbo traders and others from the South.
Consequently, on June 14, 2021, President Buhari expressed his opposition to the decision of the southern governors, saying that he had instructed the AGF, to “go and dig out the gazette of the First Republic” and vigorously pursue the recovery of grazing routes in many states across the country.
The position adopted by the President and the AGF attracted widespread criticism from different parts of the country, especially from states where open grazing had been banned based on criminality and insecurity.
Some Nigerians, who are opposed to open grazing, have argued that cattle rearing ought to be a private business and the Muhammadu Buhari administration had no right using the country’s resources to promote one ethnic group to the detriment of others. Some even accused the President of trying to turn the country into a ‘cow republic’.
In response to President Buhari’s quest to recover the grazing routes, a pan-Yoruba self-determination group, the Oodua People’s Sovereign Movement (OPSOM), has vowed to resist the establishment of grazing routes in the South-West.
Explaining its position, the presidency said the Federal Government decided to take this step in order to halt the bloody clashes between herders and farmers across the country. The statement read in part: “The President’s directive followed his approval of the recommendations of a committee chaired by the Chief of Staff to the President, Prof Ibrahim Gambari.
“The committee also recommended the production of maps and geo-mapping/tagging of sites, analysis of findings and report preparations, as well as the design of appropriate communication on grazing reserves and operations.
“The number of the grazing reserves and states were deduced from considerations of existing security concerns and other pre-existing socio-economic conditions. The President directed that the assignment be undertaken with dispatch to bring more understanding on the grazing reserves and implementation.”
But OPSOM maintained that it would resist any attempt to establish grazing routes in any part of Oyo, Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti States. The group argued that grazing routes would not solve any problem as it would aggravate the existing ones.
Registered under the umbrella body of Yoruba self-determination groups, Ilana Omo Oodua (IOO) and led by a renowned historian, Prof Banji Akintoye, OPSOM expressed its displeasure with the way the Federal Government has “consistently devised means to ensure the establishment of cattle colonies in Yorubaland through a backdoor policy of tracing and reclaiming abandoned and archaic practice of grazing routes that was in existence in the 1960s.
“The council resolved to apply the instrumentalities of the law, media and intellectualism to fight what is considered illegality and a subtle attempt at land grabbing in favour of certain part of the country.”
The grazing routes in Nigeria date back to the 1950s when a certain Hamisu Kano created a grazing reserve in the North with the aid of the then administration. He had used the abandoned government resettlement schemes (the Fulani Resettlement). The reason for the establishment of the grazing reserve was to prevent food shortage in the North and to accommodate herders in the North.
The historical reference to the formative stage of grazing reserves in the country is to give more credence to the argument that the Grazing Reserve Law was only aimed for enforcement in northern Nigeria and not the entire country. This is because the grazing routes, which enabled herders to move from one grazing reserve to another, only allowed for such areas where the grazing reserves were available. And that is the North.
We do not support the Federal Government’s policy of encouraging open grazing, despite widespread opposition to it, as this may portray it as being insensitive to the insecurity pervading the country.
We cannot agree less that ranching rather than open grazing is the modern means of raising cattle across the World and Nigeria cannot be an exemption.
Therefore, we call on the government to shelve the proposed resuscitation of grazing routes and instead, encourage and support ranching.
This will also avoid unnecessary conflict between the governments of the southern states, some of which have already passed the Anti-Open Grazing Laws in their respective states.
We need cooperation between the various levels of government, especially at this critical stage in our country’s history, not open confrontation.
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