To us here in Nigeria, a colony is nothing new. The colony of Lagos established by the British in 1861 has familiarised us to it. The idea underlying a colony, both in antiquity and in modern times, is that of settlement: see British Settlements Act 1887. A colony is a place for the settlement of people “with common or similar language, interests or occupations, living together in close association”, like the farm settlements established in some parts of the Eastern Region by the government of M.I. Okpara.
The cattle colonies which the federal government proposes to establish in every state of the federation can, therefore, mean nothing other than a place for the settlement of Fulani herdsmen, however much the federal government may try to hide this fact, by, for example, calling it “cattle colony”; that is what it is intended to be, and will eventually become, if it is not such from inception.
Its character as a place for the settlement of Fulani herdsmen is implicit in the agriculture minister’s long presentation giving details of the proposed project, as published in the Nigerian Tribune of January 12, which leaves him no room to gainsay it. It is not the idea that cattle is to be left in a colony without a herder or keeper, without someone to feed it, give it water, and keep a watchful and protective eye on it. Rearing cattle or livestock necessarily requires a herder. From what we know, two or more herders will be needed to follow and tend 100 cows; accordingly, 300 herders will be needed to tend 30,000 cows. A colony of 30,000 cows requires 300 herders living in the colony. It may be expected that a herder may have a family, a wife (wives) and children living with him in the colony. We are therefore talking of 300 Fulani herdsmen and their families lodged in the body of a state under the scheme.
Here’s what the minister said: “We are talking of colonies because 20, 30, or 40 ranchers can share the same colony. A ranch is usually owned by an individual or a company with sometimes very few cattle. Some have more than 200 or 300 cows. In a cattle colony, you could find 30,000 cows owned by different owners.”
“The reason we are designing the colony is that we want to prepare on a large scale, on economy of scale, a place where many owners of cattle can coexist, be fed well, because we can make their feeds. They can get good water to drink. Cows drink a lot of water. We can give them green fodder.”
The minister talks only of cattle owners or ranchers, but not at all of herders, who are essentially the cause of the problem. The cattle owners or ranchers are no doubt a part of the problem but the part they play seems somewhat peripheral. The herdsmen are at the centre of the problem.
From the minister’s presentation, the cattle colony scheme may magnify the problems beyond what they presently are. The scheme is not intended to, and will not, stop the open grazing practice, which is the main cause of the problem. It may well reduce, but will not completely stop it. The minister affirms this when he said: “We will tell the herdsmen, if you are passing through a state, you can only go to the colony and stay there, feed your cattle and, when you are moving off, agro-rangers will follow you and make sure you don’t destroy anybody’s farm.” This statement is confusing to say the least. It seems to suggest that a cattle colony as a settlement for herdsmen and their cattle will be combined with the existing practice of herdsmen roaming over the whole country with their cattle, but stopping at a colony to feed them.
The minister’s emphasis on the process of acquiring land for the colony is misdirected. The issue is not so much about the process for acquiring land, but about the ownership of the land after it is acquired and, more important, about the right to the exclusive use, management and control of the land so acquired. Does the ownership of the land belong to the federal government, or to traditional communities, villages and families supposed to have been divested of it? Does the right to the exclusive use, management and control of the land belong to the federal government, the cattle owners or the herdsmen?
Perhaps, more worrisome, is the issue of the relationship of the Fulani herdsmen settled on the land and the political authorities in the state – the state government, the local government authorities and the traditional authorities, the town unions, the community development associations, the civil defence and vigilante groups, etc. Will the Fulani herdsmen settled on the land, the cattle owners and their association, the Miyetti Allah, not constitute themselves a “state” within a state?
The deadliest of the implications of the establishment of cattle colonies in every state of the federation is the religious and cultural implications.
The colonisation and islamisation (by conquest) of Hausaland is reminiscent of the colonisation and islamisation (again by conquest) of North Africa by the Arabs in the 7th century A.D. The conquest has been described as “the most amazing feat in military history”: Will Durant, The Story of Civilisation, vol iv, pp. 155.
But even if we are able to avert being subjugated and Islamised by Fulani herdsmen militia armed with AK47 guns, we may still meet the same fate by peaceful penetration into our various communities by Fulani herdsmen settled in the cattle colonies through the process known as acculturation. The Fulani settlers will bring to the cattle colonies, as part of their baggage, the religion of Islam, just as the English settlers in the 13 colonies in North America in 1607 and the years following took with them, as part of their baggage, English law, with its political institutions as well as English customs, conventions and traditions, including the precepts and practices of the Christian religion, just as the early Greek settlers in their colonies on the coastline of Italy, France and Spain took with them, as part of their baggage, Greek culture, tradition and religious precepts and practices.
As Will Durant, in his monumental eleven volume treatise, titled The Story of Civilisation, vol. 11, p. 127, tells us, these ancient Greek “colonies became greater than their mother cities, and preceded them in the development of wealth and art. The real creators of Greek culture were not the Greeks of what we now call Greece, but those who fled before the conquering Dorians, fought desperately for a foothold on foreign shores, and there, out of their Mycenaean memories and their amazing energy, made the art and science, the philosophy and poetry that, long before Marathon, placed them in the forefront of the Western world.”
One of the products of the Greek colonies on the Italian coastline was Pythagoras (580-500 B.C.), generally acknowledged as the father of both science and philosophy in Europe — his theorems and his theories of numbers and proportion became the foundation of geometry, arithmetic and algebra (the terms mathematics and philosophy were first used by him). He was born of Greek parentage in Samoa, a Greek colony, and lived most of his life in Crotona, another Greek colony. The great Athenian oracle on philosophy and political ideas, Plato (427-347 B.C.), took so much of his ideas from Pythagoras. And the first written code of law in Greek history originated in one of these colonies in 664 B.C.
The same feature characterised the colonies on the Mediterraneous coastline of North Africa settled by the ancient Phoenicians and Greeks of which the largest and best-known were Utica (Utique) and Carthage (both in present-day Tunisia) and Oea (Tripoli in Libya), founded by Phoenicians in 1100 B.C., 813 B.C. and 900 B.C. respectively, and Cyrene, founded in 641 B.C., by Greek settlers (Cyrene together with four other Greek colonies, constitutes the province of Cyrenaica, one of the three provinces of present-day Libya.) Like the English settlers in North America in the 17th century and Greek settlers mentioned earlier, these Phoenicians and Greek settlers in North Africa also took with them to their new settlements, the civilisation, the habits, traditions, the political ideas, governmental institutions and processes they had imbibed in their home countries.
- Prof Nwabueze is a renowned constitutional lawyer.
