OF HERDSMEN & THE RANCHING OPTION

If it is the matter of desertification occasioned by climate change via global warming that's at the heart of this migration to the South of herdsmen from the North, in search of foliage for their cattle, then a more sustainable solution, other than those already postulated by proponents of grazing reserves, cattle colonies and the likes, without considerations for ranching, is required. To begin with, nothing says that the forests and vegetation of the south wouldn't one day be lost, not only to the forces of nature that had successfully licked up the body of water that used to be where the Sahara desert is today, or that rapidly shrunk the size of the Lake Chad, but also to urbanisation and high population growth rate, besides the fact that wood continues to be a popular source of household fuel amongst the poor due to ever increasing cost of fossil fuels in Third World economies like Nigeria.


There's an ongoing diplomatic conflict between Egypt and her neighbours over issues of rights to the Nile. Under British rule, priority was given Egypt over the other African states through which the Nile also flows. Increased energy demands means that a country like Ethiopia must dam the aspect of the Nile passing through it, with other countries also diverting the waters, sometimes for irrigation purposes, because of existing realities, also because of the realization that not everything the British says or wants is cast in stone, seeing as they don't any longer have dominion, howbeit directly, over these "independent" states.  At one of the meetings organized amongst the affected African countries, Egypt staged a walkout,  but that did very little to change the resolve of the other African countries to insist on their right to do with the aspect of the Nile that passes through their territories as they wish. If the British had always been right, and hadn't done things to suit their own pleasures only, the Middle East would've been at peace, at least to some extent, without the memories of the Sykes-Picot Agreement/Line and the Balfour Delaration for example, in making a case for deflating the notion that just because the British willed something so, it therefore must remain infallible and undebatable, even if it has become illogical and non-consonant with the dictates of our time.


I have raised the above scenario because of the insistence of herder groups like the Miyetti Allah, on grazing corridors allotted

them across Nigeria by the British, a decision that remains doubtful as to how much local input was sought and garnered by the colonising British authorities while they held sway before Nigeria's independence. The reason why those grazing routes have all but disappeared today is because it was never sustainable, and the British aren't gods, that whatever they say, just because it favours a group, must be sacrosanct. The solution therefore cannot be that the farms (to ensure food security) or structures (private or public) or the likes currently sitting on the grazing routes, be removed. It cannot also be that new grazing routes be delineated even if the land is currently being put to no use, seeing as the earlier attempt after many years have failed, and is currently at the root of so much bloodshed, occasioned by constant clashes between farmer and herder communities, many times culminating in attacks on farming communities in Northcentral Nigeria by herdsmen suspected to be of Fulani stock akin to what you find when genocide and ethnic cleansing is committed.

Even that yarn that the breed of cattle in Nigeria and West Africa cannot be ranched holds no water. Are the cattle wild? Does the fact that they can be controlled to move in the direction their herders want not mean that they are and can be domesticated/ranched? The ones been ranched today had ancestors who started off nomadic but had to change their lifestyle to suit the dictates of the time. The only reason I think, why ranching may have not been given the right consideration amongst the stakeholders who currently oppose it, boils down mainly to laziness, as well as that rent-seeking penchant that's almost second nature with Nigeria and Nigerians, that makes improving a product to expand it's value chain, anathema (as typified with the fact that Nigeria currently has no petroleum refinery working to half it's optimum capacity, despite being a crude "oil producing" country). The positives of ranching far outweighs the negative (if any, besides the fact that herders would now be compelled to pay taxes and other dues as a going concern) from ranching, it is even an industry on its own, that is why with all the bloodletting that's associated with rearing cattle in Nigeria via nomadism (which is just scratching the surface of what the whole could entail if ranching is embraced), we aren't even a force to reckon with compared to other nations where ranching is norm and the value chain alone is such that sale of cattle just for the sake of beef consumption (as is with the business in Nigeria) pales in comparison to by-products such as leather, milk, cheese, bone, blood and other derivatives from cattle when ranched, so much so that during one of the episodes of KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS, one of the kids been interviewed by Bill Cosby, erroneously said chocolate is made from cattle, buttressing how so great a role cattle and it's products play in the life of people in the west and developed economies worldwide.


History hardly favours societies that are adamant, unamenable and unwilling to change. If herders in Nigeria, including Fulani, within and outside of Nigeria feel they can have their way by force, and they succeed in wiping out all obstacles till they hit the Atlantic in the south and west of Nigeria and Africa, they will eventually find that they'd still have to ranch, either because the cattle would have eaten up all of the foliage left at some point (at unchecked growth rate, with those who should eat such beef redeemed with the shedding of blood already dead) , or global warming will meet up with them to diminish vegetation in the south. Even in farming, age old culture of leaving land to fallow while moving to another to allow it regain fertility, have given way to fertilizers been used on the scarce resource that land has continuously become, to encourage and promote good yield consistently. The days of depending on nature to guarantee rainfall, has given way to irrigation methods to ensure that even seasonal crops can be cultivated and harvested all year round, capped with storage facilities to assure their all year round availability, so why won't the Fulani and other herders in Nigeria and West Africa change with the times, even to and for their own benefit?


'kovich


PICTURE CREDIT:
- https://www.hipstamp.com

AS NIGERIA FORGETS JULY 29, 1966

29th July fifty years ago, Nigeria's story took another turn that appears to have eternally sealed it's fate, as a country whose  nationalities will forever remain distrustful of one another, for as long as they will manage to cohabit. It was the day the revenge coup was launched against military and civilian Nigerians of the ethnic Igbo stock, of southeastern Nigerian origin, everywhere outside of eastern Nigeria and their closest neighbors in the Niger Delta. I say another, because the first turning point had occurred on the 15th of January of the same year, with the first coup, which was welcome by many as an act of  patriotism, but as the days passed, was given the coloration of been biased in favor of the Igbo, and against most especially the northern Hausa-Fulani hegemony, which controlled power at the center in the days following Nigeria's independence from Great Britain.


Unfortunately, a day like yesterday passed without official statements or program by the government, apart from some discourse on some media, a few of which I was able to follow on radio and on the social media. It is sad that Nigeria pretends to move forward without any attempt at burying the ghosts of the past, while making the same mistakes over and over, enabling some Nigerians to ensure that the so called giant of Africa remains a perpetual Lilliput. Taking one step forward only when it had made plans to the effect that ten steps backwards was mutually assured, only to their own benefit, as well as their acquaintances.


I believe that Nigeria cannot make progress in the forward direction if our history isn't truthfully addressed and told. This is not a nation, it is a country of nations, or nationalities if you like, and it is built on a lie. Our founding fathers weren't the saints that they are officially made out to be, or else their ouster in the January 1966 coup wouldn't have been widely celebrated and greeted with wild jubilation and ululation in the nooks and cranny of Nigeria back then. They laid the foundation of  corruption mixed with tribalism and nepotism, amongst many other ills, that is strangling us as a nation today. The coupists were idealists but failed to convince Nigerians that they had no sectional agenda, in sparing Igbo politicians and soldiers, and officers of the eastern Nigerian extraction, a few of which were conveniently outside the country as at the time of the coup, or were simply not found in their usual and unusual locations when the coupists struck. Some were even seen to be chatting with some camaraderie with the those meant to "neutralize" them, as they crossed paths on some bridge.


General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, having successfully quelled a supposedly Igbo coup, been an Igbo officer, erred in not immediately restoring power back to the politicians regardless of their sins, rather he accepted to rule Nigeria. I saw a few of his interviews on YouTube and he didn't even strike me as one who recognized the import the weight of ruling Nigeria means. He was largely aloof. He also dilly dallied on the fate of the coupists whose ringleaders were five majors, four of which were Igbo like him, and a Yoruba from Nigeria's Southwest. The unitary system of  government that he had decreed  (Decree 34, which amongst others abolished the regions, which were three at independence, and four at the time, in favor of provinces) into being, which he embarked on a journey across Nigeria to sell (and from which he never returned alive) has remained an albatross for us. The northern Nigerian elite who rejected it at the time because they felt it was a ploy to keep and foster the Igbo over and above the other ethnic groups in the civil service and elsewhere, have over the years after the revenge coup of July, 1966 become the greatest beneficiary of the system. And though Nigeria today lies that it's a federation it has remained a unitary state, where once the center coughs the states catch cold. We had simply exchanged external colonizers for internal colonizers, all thanks to the military's foray into politics, after coups and counter-coups, and in the democratic dispensation after elections, dressed in civilian garb.


The 1999 constitution (as amended) handed over to us by the military (like many others before it) has made any attempt at changing the status quo democratically, impossible. No constitutional conference or the likes held severally over the years have been trusted enough by governments and succeeding governments, as well as contending ethno-religio-social groupings across Nigeria, as documents viable enough to change things. It is become obvious that the change mantra that ushered in the new incumbent government isn't worth the paper on which it was written. The hue and cry now is about RESTRUCTURING, yet none of the advocates mentioned anything about July 29th,1966 yesterday at public fora or the likes, seeing that any restructuring that needs to be done must recognize that it was on that date that an opportunity to truly restructure things despite the needless bloodshed that followed (for days on end, of Igbo folk nationwide, save in the east) was missed, rather the "revenge coup" by soldiers of northern Nigerian extraction like vampires thirsted insatiably for Igbo blood, and encouraged the civil populace in the north to do likewise, if not worse, then went ahead to embrace the unitary system, adding to it other lingua such as federal character, quota system, rotation, etc over the years that have perpetuated mediocrity and nepotism over merit in our public, even private spaces nationwide.


Twas yesterday, fifty years ago that some Nigerians corrected a supposed wrong with another wrong, and today we reap the fruits thereof, and even worse set ourselves on the pedestal to continue taking such sour grapes by not recognizing that day fifty years ago, when Nigeria lost its soul and humanity. Many will say that the war after the event of that day whetted appetites and we emerged stronger from it, but that's also yet another lie, because the truth is that Nigeria as presently constituted is tearing up at its seams and the center can no longer

NIGERIA

hold. We have failed to tell the truth about our past, therefore a truthful foundation for the future based on mutual trust cannot be laid, or built upon. There's no stopping this groping in the dark for a long time to come, not even the anti-corruption fight by President Muhammadu Buhari will change anything, even that as sectional as it continues to play out is just treating the symptom and not the disease, for Nigeria is sick!


'kovich


PICTURE CREDIT:
- GEORGE A'S GALLERY

A SECTIONAL BUHARI AND A DIVIDED NIGERIA

I have been saddened since President  Muhammadu Buhari made his Democracy Day speech last Sunday, the 29th of May. I had felt that I was the only one who noticed that he made no mention of Fulani Herdsmen amongst groups he declared security threats to the nation, despite the fact that the group, his kinsmen may have killed more people, who hadn't the opportunity to fight back, than the official enemy of the state with whom his government now seem set to dialogue, the fundamentalist Islamic group, Boko Haram.


Interestingly, the next day security forces clashed with unarmed pro-Biafra activists during a peaceful protest in Asaba, Onitsha and Nkpor, amongst several locations in the southeast, where according to the latest report forty of the protesters are said to have died, while two policemen lost their lives, in what seems to have become a recurring decimal each time protests like this takes place in the East of Nigeria. In fact, during an interview,  which President Buhari granted Al-Jazeera months back, he refused to watch footage of security operatives swooping in on unarmed pro-Biafra activists during a prayer session, in an open field and shooting some of them in cold blood.

UNARMED PRO-BIAFRA ACTIVISTS HOLDING A PEACEFUL PROTEST BEFORE THINGS WENT AWRY 

It pained me to note that a President of a multiethnic nation like Nigeria could be so sectional to ignore in that speech, the genocidal activity of his Fulani kinsmen,  to focus on groups especially in the South by whose hands no life has yet been lost, and who after much criticisms for his silence over the continued menace of his kinsmen on the lives and livelihood of other Nigerians, simply claimed that the marauding Fulani were none other than strangers from Libya, despite mounting evidence in text and video that these were armed Fulani militia from Nigeria, ranked fourth on the global index of terrorist groups, whose activities aren't even covert but carried out with impunity, sometimes with the security agencies conveniently staying out of their way when and while they strike.


It is therefore with much sadness that I heard the Inspector General of Police, instructing his men to disarm unarmed pro-Biafra activists and protesters while he has never said anything close to that concerning Fulani Herdsmen who have replaced bows and arrows and sticks with AK-47's. The only group besides security forces, armed robbers and terrorists who travel with such light weapons, discharging bullets with reckless abandon, when simple citizens could spend the night or more (to be bailed only after parting with huge sums of money, and physical and mental torture) in the police cell for having a pen knife in their person during the usual illegal police "stop and search".


To compound my sadness, is the deafening silence amongst so called Igbo  leaders, political or not, who haven't deemed it fit to confront the government for the wanton killings of their own for engaging in what is seen to be very legal in democracies worldwide, even going to the extent of calling their own hoodlums, at a time accused terrorists are been released in droves on the instance or prodding of the northern political, traditional and religious oligarchy. Even a former governor and now senator Kwankwaso from Kano came to Lagos to bail out Hausa youths arrested for complicity in the recent clashes between the Yoruba and Hausa in the Mile 12 Area of Lagos. It had to take an Ekiti governor,  Ayo Fayose from the Southwest to stand with the Igbo youth for daring to mark the anniversary of the day in 1967 when the Late Dim Odumegwu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, then a colonel, declared the Sovereign State of Biafra, separate from Nigeria, to which Nigeria responded with a war of attrition for three years, after the Igbo safety couldn't be guaranteed any longer within the geographical space called Nigeria, a situation that seems not to have changed much,  not just in the North where many of them reside, but now even in their own land.


Nigeria may have survived the prophecy that it was doomed for disintegration in 2015, but it doesn't mean that it can't still happen in the immediate or remote future, especially with a sectional president who feels that the so called oneness of Nigeria is non-negotiable, and would die rather than see the day, than submit like former Vice President Abubakar Atiku did at a book launch recently on the subject of Biafra, that Nigeria needs to be restructured such that the constituent parts can have a sense of belonging. Unfortunately, President Buhari has chosen to waste this golden opportunity to become a statesman, even stating that the document from what is viewed by some, as a flawed National Conference held while former President Goodluck Jonathan was in power isn't worth even as much as a skimming through for some of its merits. Of course, with that attitude, it isn't surprising that vistas of hotspots are opening up in different places all over Nigeria with each passing day, chief of which is the Niger Delta Avengers who have managed to half Nigeria's crude oil production capacity with their precision attacks on oil drilling platforms and pipelines, while the economy seems to be trying to drill into the earth's core at the rate at which it's falling, just months after he came into power, and Nigeria's economy was adjudged the biggest and fastest growing in Africa, and third in the world. He forgets easily, that the trouble we brew today, we drink tomorrow!


'kovich


PICTURE CREDIT:
- http://www.nigerianeye.com