In the last few years, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) has never been far away from controversy. Whether it is in defending its members against allegations of slaughter and rape, driving their cattle into farmlands belonging to others or threatening communities with mayhem, the group has often shown that when push comes to shove, it has frightening reserves of aggression.
It is itself a beleaguered organization as cattle rustling continues to pose an existential threat to the livelihoods of its members with entire herds eviscerated by the many criminals who ignore the many sacrifices that go into cattle rearing. MACBAN has borne the full brunt of the loss of credibility Fulani herdsmen have cupped as Nigeria has plunged into insecurity.
This is because when villages have been devastated by massacres, rapes, arson, looting and other heinous acts bespeaking a scorched earth mentality, fingers have been wagged at Fulani herdsmen and the cattle they breed.
When farms have been trampled and sources of livelihood and food security torn to shreds, the hooves of cattle have been seen alongside the footprints of those who show them the way they must go.
The destructively ferocious friction has seen a head-on collision between those who are proud torchbearers of soil tilling traditions and those for whom herding cattle is more central to their identity than anything else. Many states in Nigeria have provided battlegrounds for an ancient blood feud. Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, Taraba and Nasarawa States have been especially affected.
Some states in the Southeast and the Niger-Delta as well as the Southwest have also known the bitter taste of what happens when cattle collide with crops. To solve the problem which has come to define some of the sorest points of Nigerian insecurity, countless meetings have been convoked in futility just as countless proposals have failed to lead to any solution. All these have happened because at the core of how to ensure that cattle and crops can live in peace is a maelstrom of bitterness and suspicion whipped up by ethnicism.
Plateau State has especially proved a cauldron of the clashes between farmers and Fulani herdsmen. Thus, when the Plateau State Government recently transmitted the bill for a law to establish the State Livestock Transformation Programme (SLTP) to the Plateau State House of Assembly, MACBAN in the state was unanimous in its rejection of the bill.
According to the State Chiarman of MACBAN, Mr. Mohammed Abdullah, the bill should be suspended because not only was it disgusting, it could throw the state into another round of mayhem. He decried the stringent procedures involved in getting permits to participate in the STLP given the discriminatory tendencies towards Fulani herders on the Plateau.
Mr. Abdullah also impugned the penalties the proposed law would impose on violators of the law which he felt is targeted at robbing and annihilating Fulani herders and depriving them of their belongings.
However, in its reaction, the Plateau State Government stressed that MACBAN was carried along at each stage of the deliberations that went into the SLTP. The government was at pains to demonstrate that that the SLTP was not targeted at any ethnic group.
The Plateau State Government also argued that the bill serves common good, is all encompassing, and robustly predicated on six fundamental pillars namely economic benefit, conflict resolution, law and order, humanitarian relief, information, education and strategic communication among other cross-cutting issues.
It bears note to point out that the SLTP embarked upon by the Plateau State Government is neither unique nor original to the state. In many ways, it borrowed many leaves out of the books of the National Livestock Transformation Plan which the Federal Government launched with the inauguration of a model ranching hub project in Awe local government Area of Nasarawa State in 2021 to develop the livestock sub-sector which had hitherto not been given proper attention, causing friction between farmers and herders. The project was well-conceived to reform the livestock sub-sector from nomadic dependent into an organized ranching one.
It is noteworthy that as of the time the NLTP was launched by the Federal Government in Awe, 22 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory had registered with the NLTP Secretariat and ten of them had created their own teams that were already trained by the secretariat.
Thus, it begs the question that if the SLTP by the Plateau State Government is only a microcosm of the NLTP by the Federal Government which ultimately seeks to reduce tension between herdsmen and farmers, why then is Miyetti Allah crying wolf where there appears to be none? What is the furor it is raising all about? Does it not want a practical and practicable solution to a problem that is at the very heart of Nigeria`s worsening insecurity crises?
While there can be no justification for cattle rustling or the recent ultimatum given the group by the IPOB in the Southeast, it neither helps the credibility nor business interests of the association that it has been implicated in many attacks that have devastated many communities that knew only serenity and tranquility before cattle marched through them.
It also does not help Miyetti Allah that it has often abandoned discretion which is the better part of valour while dishing out incendiary statements that have fueled the ethnic flames licking up the country.
It cannot and should never be the case that in this age when countries are trying to better organize their cities so as to best manage their populations and maximise potentials, cattle should be allowed to run free and wild without a care in the world for the multiplex interests of others. There is no doubt that if cattle are allowed to so move, not only will they invariably move to places where they are not wanted, but they will draw the sinister attention of cattle rustlers thus setting the stage for bloody herdsmen-farmer clashes.
There is no doubt that this is not in the interest of a united, progressive Nigeria. Yet, it appears to be what Miyetti Allah wants.
For all its shortcomings, Nigeria remains a country of laws. Until this changes, the law must continue to take its course to smoothen the rough edges of coexistence especially by containing the predilections of those who insatiably thirst for conflict.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
