By Bisi Oladele, Ibadan
Herders in Oyo State have sued the state government and the House of Assembly over the recently passed anti-grazing law. They described the law as a gross violation of their fundamental rights.
Gan Allah Fulani Development Association of Nigeria instituted the suit on behalf of herders in the state. They also joined the state’s Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in the suit.
The association had appealed to the Assembly to consider an alternative grazing space for their members while the bill was in the works. They described it as settled grazing.
But the Chairman, House Committee on Information, Hon. Kazeem Olayanju, explained at the time that the herders in Oyo State had nothing to fear about the law because it was aimed at regulating grazing in the state in a way that would protect them and other members of the society.
Olayanju explained that the Assembly recognised that the herders in the state had lived together peacefully with indigenes for several decades, adding that the lawmakers were aware that they had full integrated into the various communities where they had been living and doing their business.
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According to him, rather than ban open grazing totally, the bill was proposing registration of all cattle-rearers for issuance of permit.
The lawmaker further explained that the Assembly believed that most of those involved in criminality were foreigners and herders who came from other parts of the country to infiltrate the resident herders, thereby giving them a bad name.
He noted that the bill would make it compulsory for all involved in grazing to get a permit so that they could be traced as full residents with known addresses and antecedents.
He said the permit would make it easy to identify and arrest infiltrators, stressing that the bill would also protect peaceful cattle rearers residing in the state.
The bill was eventually passed into law after a public hearing where different stakeholders submitted memoranda. Governor Seyi Makinde signed it into law last month.
But in the suit marked M/744/2019, the herders prayed the court to declare the law illegal, unconstitutional, null and void.
They also want the court to grant them an order of perpetual injunction restraining all the “respondents, whether by themselves, their servants, agents, officers or otherwise from carrying out any acts or omission, which is likely to aid the enactment or even enact or pass the purported anti-grazing bill into law” as this would amount to a denial of their fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution of Nigeria.
The herders also prayed the court to declare the law as a coordinated attempt or strategy at curtailing their livelihood and further frustrating their lives in breach of some provisions, particularly Section 33 (1) of the 1999 Nigerian constitution.
For aggravated, punitive and general damages, they asked the court to grant them N100,000 against the respondents jointly and severally for the violation of their fundamental rights.
The case is yet to be assigned to a judge for hearing.
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