The following is a press release issued by the Tiv Professionals Group (TPG) calling on the Nigerian government to take action against armed Fulani herdsmen.
The following is a press release issued by the Tiv Professionals Group (TPG) calling on the Nigerian government to take action against armed Fulani herdsmen.
Fulani Militia Herdsmen have crossed the Line!
Tiv people: men, women and children have continued to be relentlessly hunted as wild game on their ancestral lands and in their homes by a bloodthirsty Fulani militia. This has led to thousands of deaths, wholesale displacement of people, large scale destruction of settlements, property and farm produce. There has also been forceful seizure and annexation of ancestral lands. The Tiv Professionals Group (TPG) is of the opinion that the incessant Fulani attacks on unarmed rural farmers in Tiv land and elsewhere across the country is part of a clandestine agenda to take over parts of the country through stealth.
Between 2013-2016 alone, Fulani herdsmen killed more than 1,878 men, women and children in cold blood, from twelve Local Government Areas of Benue State. Another 750 were seriously wounded while 200 are missing. Over 99,427 households were affected in Benue State and property worth billions of naira destroyed through a brutal scorch-earth strategy. In Taraba State, more than 1,159 men, women and children were killed in seven Local Government Areas during the same period. More than 24,562 people were internally displaced. 171 Christian places of worship were destroyed in addition to whole settlements and farm produce. In Nasarawa State where the Tiv also reside in large numbers, over 4,000 men, women and children have been killed in the past four years in Keana, Doma, Awe, Obi and Lafia Local Government Areas. Over 100,000 have been displaced and their ancestral lands in Doma, Awe and Lafia annexed and occupied. Cumulative losses to the country since 2013 as a result of Fulani herdsmen activities is estimated in excess of $14 billion while States directly affected by Fulani terrorism have lost on average about 47% of their Internally Generated Revenues (IGR).
A trans-border Fulani militia spearheads the attacks. Apparently with the full support of ranking Fulani leaders in the country including an assortment of Fulani bodies especially Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), The Pastoral Resolve (PARE) and the GAN Allah Fulani Association. PARE had by 2012 sought –N-5 billion to establish pilot grazing reserves in Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kogi and Nasarawa states. Fulani leaders with an inordinate sense of entitlement have continued to ask for grazing reserves and stock routes across the country even when core Northern states with greater Fulani presence have rejected the concept of grazing reserves within their boundaries. They have also confessed commitment to rapid punitive responses against parts of the country resisting open grazing to ensure complete destabilization of communities as a way of creating criminal nuisance and vortex to gain political traction.
The Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has cleverly identified and handsomely paid some of these trans border militia herdsmen. Emboldened, they operate as criminal gangs; mercenaries, kidnappers and cattle rustlers from safe havens within the country. The frequency and brutality of their attacks are a threat to the security and unity of the country. It is little wonder that they have a notorious listing in the corridors of global terror as the 4th deadliest terror group in the world, after Boko Haram, ISIS, and Al- shabab.
Regrettably, the Nigerian Government with incumbent fiduciary security responsibility to protect citizens and ensure their property rights has egregiously failed to square up to Fulani herdsmen terror. In this failure, we are sad to note that virtually, all security agencies and structures in the country are in the hands of Fulani people. Could this be a reason why security agents seem to be acquiescing in this matter at the detriment of our people? Government is curiously contemplating the importation of exotic grasses from outside the country for Fulani herdsmen. Government is also trying to resuscitate colonial era grazing reserves and stock routes to service the Fulani economy of indiscriminate open grazing across the country. Ranking government officials including the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh have repeatedly spoken in favour of open indiscriminate grazing by the Fulani even when this is an obsolete and disruptive livestock strategy attended by conflict and bloodshed. The nomadic pastoral model is unsustainable as a result of current demographic and environmental challenges in the country. Contrary to the position canvassed by Fulani apologists, the ECOWAS Protocols on Transhumance and Free Movement of Goods and Services, does not support trans border Fulani incursions deep into the country attended by conflict, criminal activities, and adverse public health consequences.
The TPG avers that grazing reserves and stock routes are a skewed colonial livestock infrastructure designed to privilege the Fulani at the expense of other nationalities in the country. Attempts by the Government of Northern Nigeria to establish more grazing reserves and stock routes across the Region in 1965 failed. Similar attempts by the Military Government with the support of the United State Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1976 also failed. The failure of grazing reserves in post Independent Nigeria is because of several reasons. One, there are no uncommitted tracks of land across the states of the Federation which can be ceded as reserves and stock routes for the exclusive use of Fulani herdsmen. At Independence, the country had 0.51 hectares of arable land per citizen. This figure shrunk to 0.29 hectares by 1990 and to 0.21 by 2010. At current population growth, it will shrink to 0.17 by 2020, 0.13 by 2030 and 0.08 by 2050. Grazing reserves have also continued to be seen as a distortion capable of creating distinct territories and sovereignties within the country. The concept is not only unconstitutional and against the provisions of the Land Use Act of 2004, it is neither profitable nor healthy.
As stated earlier, the ECOWAS Protocols do not support trans border criminality and makes clear and unambiguous exceptions justifiable by reasons of public order, public safety and public health. Fulani militia herdsmen and their trans border kith and kin however go deep into Nigerian territory and seek to graze by force of arms undermine public order, public safety and public health. They must not be allowed to seek shelter under the ECOWAS protocols whose letter and spirit they undermine. Those who shield them under the cover of ‘international hunters’ like Governor Tanko Al- Makura of Nasarawa State and those who deploy public funds to ‘pay them off’, as Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State must be brought to account.
The Fulani lobby for grazing, reserves and stock routes across the country is nothing but cheap blackmail. The Nigerian livestock challenge should be about improved livestock production practices instead of a Fulani attempt to cling to an obsolete lifestyle of privilege in which cattle come before citizens. Recently, Chief Audu Ogbeh disclosed that the Federal Government would train 3,000 Peace Corps members to protect herdsmen from cattle rustlers. This means that the Federal Government values livestock over citizens. The TPG condemns this twisted value system in the strongest terms and is ashamed of Chief Audu Ogbeh.
The country must regulate livestock production and management to ensure improved production practices that are peaceful, healthy and safe. Each Nigerian State was created to give indigenes political space within which to explore their full potentials within the country. Fulani herdsmen just as other Nigerians have their States and Local Governments. If they insist on grazing reserves and stock routes, their states should establish these for them. PARE, MACBAN and other Fulani leaders and bodies craving for grazing reserves must seek these in states of the North where Fulani are indigenous.
The TPG calls on President Muhamadu Buhari, who is also a life patron of MACBAN, to break his unholy silence on the murderous activities of Fulani herdsmen. He must be bold and should also be seen to be faithful to the letters of the Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office he took, as contained in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. He must not be seen as willfully neglecting to uphold the provisions of Chapter 2, Section 14[2b] of the Constitution, which states thus: ‘The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.’ He should treat Fulani militia herdsmen as terrorists and contain their murderous and criminal activities designed to secure usufructuary rights to other lands in order to appropriate the political opportunities that such rights may convey. Mr. President, Fulani leaders and sponsors of Fulani terrorism must pause to consider the multiple ways herdsmen terrorism is threatening the unity and security of the country.
We however call on states ravaged by Fulani terrorism to immediately legislate and regulate open grazing. We salute Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti for showing the way here and we call on nationalities and communities at the receiving end of herdsmen terror to be aware that it is their duty and their right to defend themselves for as long as the Nigerian state is unable to protect them and secure their rights to their ancestral lands.
Our willingness to stay in one united country should not be taken for granted by Fulani herdsmen. We can no longer tolerate their incessant attacks and the slaughter of our people in their sleep on their ancestral lands. The Fulani have crossed the line and for the sake of our country, they must be called to order.
