Mandating cattle farmers to adopt the model of ranching and supporting them with loans from the Agriculture loan facilities is a more rational policy needed.
The last part of my answer to the avalanche of questions has provided me with the title of today’s column.My use of Grazing will include the literal meaning of driving animals to find food where ever such food is available, the equivalent of hunting and gathering cultural practice. The other sense of the usage will be metaphorical, referring to policies and actions of those in power for the past four decades to produce a political and economic culture that privileges free loading on a nationwide level. This part will play with the idea that since 1975 Nigeria’s governments have been constructed to act like grazing cattle: eating whatever herbage is available at the instance of nature without making adequate sacrifice to add value to nature through properly coordinated productive activities that can reduce reliance on just nature’s blessings to sustain West Africa’s largest market. In other words, in the language of stylistics, we will use Grazing in this column in relation to its denotation as well as its connotation.
Only last week, the media reported that the federal government had affirmed that there would be no going back on its decision to establish ranches and grazing zones across the country for Fulani herdsmen or nomadic cattle breeders. Breeding cattle for meat or milk in Nigeria, like in any other pre-modern society in the past, had been through moving cattle and goats to anywhere with pasture. What is surprising about the recent news on the decision of the federal government to curtail or end violence between cattle farmers and plant/vegetable farmers is the shallowness in the policy to acquire land as grazing zones for cattle farmers across the federal state of Nigeria. More worrying is the fact that such policy ignores complaints and suggestions by all governments and citizens of several states: Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Plateau, and all the states in the south of the country on how to end destruction of life and property perpetrated by nomadic cattle breeders.
To make the policy appear palatable to states that had suffered from intrusion of nomadic cattle rearers, a problem that should not be ignored is not about the nationality of the culprits but about the acts of violence and more importantly about the obsession with the culture of nomadic cattle rearing this late in the history of modernity across the world. Mandating cattle farmers to adopt the model of ranching and supporting them with loans from the Agriculture loan facilities is a more rational policy needed. This will give the country an opportunity to once and for all move its animal farming from primitive to modern systems.
In addition, policymakers in the ministry of agriculture and elsewhere in governments across the country need not be obsessed with continuing with an antiquated model of animal breeding. Any policy outside supporting ranches through low-interest loan is capable of being misconstrued, especially by states that rely on plant and vegetable farming for their sustenance. One possible reading of policy insistence on acquiring land across the country for Fulani herdsmen is that the federal government is trying to subsidize cattle farmers by acquiring land to give to private businessmen who own cattle and pass them to nomads to raise. The Constitution or the Land Use Act does not permit any government to acquire land from other people to give to those engaged in profit making for themselves, be they cattle or cocoa farmers. Another reading may be that the federal government is looking for land to re-settle herdsmen and in the process change the demographic and cultural character of communities from which has been taken. A third possible reading is that the federal government is unwilling to accept the imperative of modernisation that would allow Nigeria to be competitive in a fast-growing global village. A fourth reading may be that the federal government is spoiling for a fight with states that have cried foul about any policy that encourages cattle grazing across the country at the expense of the lifestyle of non-cattle farmers.
Anyone visiting Nigeria for the first time and reading about the policy to acquire land from various sections of the country for animal farmers for the purpose of grazing cannot but wonder if Nigeria is being ruled by cattle-owning political elite. But those who live in Nigeria are likely to smile, knowing how similar the insistence on establishing grazing zones (instead of opting for a more productive and less intrusive ranch model) is to the way Nigeria has been governed for decades. Perceptive readers of political, economic, and social behaviour are not likely to be surprised that the federal government feels comfortable about saying that the final solution to the perennial problem of violence and tension between cattle breeders and other farmers is to further make normal a system of animal breeding that is out of place in the modern world.
Past governments could have enjoyed limiting the country’s development in all sectors by choosing to remain myopic and unconcerned about changes that have made other countries more competitive. But a government of change cannot afford to be beholden to the past and traditions that are more likely to under-develop the country and at the same time cause disharmony among its constituent parts. Myopia and disregard for innovation in many areas have hobbled Nigeria economically and politically for decades. For example, past governments relied generally on an ‘economic policy of grazing’: living off oil rent to the disadvantage of present and future generations.
For example, had past leaders opted sincerely for the Norwegian model of investing revenue from oil at home and abroad to enable the country respond to the challenge of modern productive economy, Nigeria would not be writhing in pain because of drop in oil price. Similarly, if past leaders had invested oil revenue in energy production like South Africa, the country would have become a major manufacturer of goods that would have given the country a diversified economy before now. Had past leaders modernized and mechanised farming, we would not be calling for agricultural revolution more than 50 years after departure of British colonial masters. Ivory Coast got independence around the same time with Nigeria and does not need to be reading books on modern agriculture today. If past leaders had not been believers in the ‘philosophy of grazing’ by both humans and animals as the easiest way to run a country, Nigeria would have used its huge oil revenue in the past to create a modern infrastructure and would not have needed to run to other countries as a 56-year old country to build roads and rail for moving people and goods. If past governments had not found joy or pleasure in eating up whatever was available, the country’s wealth would have been used for sustainable development, instead of becoming loot in foreign vaults in Switzerland, the United States, United Kingdom, Panama, United Arab Emirate, etc.
A mindset that is hooked to living in pre-modern mode cannot be competitive in the contemporary world. At a time that South Africa had even started ranching wild animals, Nigeria’s competitiveness in beef and milk production cannot be enhanced by a policy that adopts ranching half-heartedly and sticks to grazing religiously. If we are sincere about agricultural revolution, there is no better time to do away with the culture of animal grazing. Even for peace and stability in the society, it is better to ranch our cattle than to let them loose to graze all over the country at the expense of motorists, and growers of cash crop, fruits and vegetables.