Insecurity: Why open grazing’s yet to stop —Gotomo, Miyetti Allah scribe
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By Dennis Agbo
National Secretary of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN, Alhaji Gotomo, led a delegation of the national executive of the association to Enugu on Tuesday to inaugurate South-East chapters of MACBAN. In this Interview, he speaks on the job of MACBAN and its effort to curb the negative impressions about herdsmen in Nigeria.
What actually is the job of MACBAN?
The major role of MACBAN is to liaise with constituted authorities, traditional rulers, and community leaders, to ensure the welfare of pastoralists. We are expected to live peacefully with farmers and community members; to ensure that our people are enlightened to embark on modern methods of livestock production, contribute immensely to the development of Nigeria economy because we control over 95 percent of livestock production and a lot of employment is generated through it.
The major problem is in the bushes where these livestock are being raised. What is MACBAN doing to ensure that herder/farmer skirmishes cease to exist?
I told you that MACBAN is doing a lot to maintain relationships with host communities, traditional rulers, and security agents to ensure that we live harmoniously with our host communities. We also don’t want to destroy any farm because crop production is an economic aspect and like the livestock are all very important to the Nigeria economy and are important for the peace and security of the nation. That is why we are interested in living peacefully with the rural populace.
Is MACBAN doing anything to help stop open grazing since it has been widely condemned as the cause of crises and insecurity?
Some states have established anti-open grazing laws but it did not work. Pastoralism is a way of life, and tradition and culture are attached to it, so there is no way it can be discarded overnight. It’s going to be done over a period of time. We cannot adopt ranches easily because ranching is a capital intensive activity. It’s just like asking local farmers to throw away their cutlasses and hoes and convert to mechanized farming. it’s not possible overnight.
So, we agreed that our people have to be motivated to embrace the modern means of livestock production. We are also aware that the population of the country has increased from 1960 to date, from 56 million to over 200 million people and a lot of infrastructural developments have evolved and overtaken fallow lands, grazing and forest reserves, but nevertheless we cannot just turn to ranching because it’s difficult and capital intensive. But we agree to adopt overtime the new methodologies of live production.
With the creation of the federal ministry of livestock production, which many states have adopted, we are doing very well. The major challenge in livestock pastoralism is the feed and water and now we are going to ensure that there is a modern form of production – commercial forms of production, that people produce feed in the period of scarcity.
We also want to control movements because if movements are controlled, the animals will be fatter, produce more milk and our people will go to school. We are conversant with that and we are doing a lot to ensure that those that are not interested in seeing livestock farmers, should know that livestock farmers are Nigerians and that they have rights. If you can have an aeroplane manufactured abroad and you give it land to fly, why don’t you give indigenous livestock? This is an old age business, there is nowhere in Nigeria that you don’t use it, and it’s a huge resource for the country.
But have you tried to make a pilot sample of ranching?
Yes, just recently the pasture planting campaign was flagged off in the Gwari council Area of the FCT by the minister and it’s one of the ways. There are meetings and research going on to ensure that local pasture, imported pasture, grasses and cereals are all propagated to ensure that livestock feed is available.
What could be responsible for what looks like a reduced rate of herders/farmers clash and even the alleged ‘Fulani kidnappers’ activities in the South-East?
It’s a combined effort of MACBAN, security agencies and traditional rulers. We enlighten our people a lot. Even in this meeting we just ended in Enugu here, we enlighten our people to enroll their children in schools, to embark on commercial pasture production in large quantity, to ensure that they participate in the continuous voter registration exercise, which was flagged off on Monday for the online registration, and all of them have accepted. Each and every one of them represent a particular pastoral settlement within the South-East geopolitical zone and they are all going to step down the information and the enlightenment we did here to their localities.
How can MACBAN dissuade some Nigerians, from the already formed negative impression about Fulani and herdsmen?
It’s a well known fact that there are criminals in every society, in every tribe; every ethnicity and Fulani is not an exception. There are criminals among us who are embarking on cattle rustling and all that. But it’s unpatriotic to profile us negatively. When you get a criminal, address him as a criminal, don’t address him with his ethnicity.
So some Fulani have embarked on banditry or what have you for whatever reason, but they cannot do it alone. There is no pastoralist center in Nigeria or village where AK-47 is manufactured, where all the illicit drugs are manufactured. They are being done not by our making and not all our people like it. Therefore, you cannot condemn the entire race because of one or two people. So we have been fighting to ensure that our people are restricted from such crimes. But those who are criminals, we are not with them, we don’t want them, we don’t condone them and we want security agencies to take adequate measures. It’s not just us but every criminal should be prosecuted in accordance with the law.
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