FULANI leaders began warning President Muhammadu Buhari about impending crisis in Logo and Guma local government areas of Benue State in May 2015 and it is extremely unjust for any Nigerian to accuse them of backing bloody conflicts anywhere, says Alhaji Sale Bayeri, the Secretary-General of Gan-Allah Fulani Development Association and member of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association’s (MACBAN) Board of Trustees.
Speaking with The Nation on telephone from his Jos base, he emphasised the need for all stakeholders to make significant concessions that would make it possible to have sustainable peace, stressing that there is no way an anti-grazing law can work.
Emphasising that MACBAN and other Fulani herdsmen associations only want a peaceful environment where they can rear their animals without conflicts, Bayari said they had warned the presidency about potential flashpoints in 75 local government areas across 21 states without appropriate proactive action by the federal government.
Noting that the Boko Haram insurgency would be a child’s play if herdsmen and farmers’ conflicts are not resolved in a way that is acceptable to all sides, he stated that there would be very grave consequences if 18 million Fulanis continue to perceive deliberate injustice.
“The way this thing is being driven through ethnicity, sectionalism, religion and politics is not going to help, it is going to make this country ungovernable.
“We have given solutions to Buhari long time ago; even before he was sworn in, I gave him a breakdown of likely explosive areas that we have, in terms of herdsmen and farmers’ restiveness.
“Yes, in 21 states and about 75 local governments; I sent a letter before his inauguration and another one, one year after his inauguration; when I didn’t get response, I wrote to him again.
“The places include Oye Local Government and two other local governments in the northern part of Ekiti. I gave him breakdown of the problem there; in Oyo State, like Shaki area, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Bauchi, Gombe, Yola, I treated them and gave him the breakdown because they are the boiling spots.
“The report is about 70 pages, I gave a breakdown which is from 1999 till date, of places where a Fulani man or herdsmen pointed a finger at a farmer and vice versa and what followed; I gave the analysis state by state and local governments by local governments and Guma and Logo was part of my report,” he explained.
According to Bayari, he personally delivered the correspondence by hand without receiving even a mere response.
“I did (warn) since May 2015 before he (President Buhari) was sworn in; I took it to his office in Maitama when the present Comptroller-General of Customs, Hameed Ali, was his Chief of Staff, and after one year when I didn’t get response, I wrote another cover letter and went to submit that one in Villa and it was acknowledged but nobody replied the letter up till date.
“Even as at that time, because of the series of crises, I suggested that government should start looking at the creation of ministry of livestock and associated services so that these problems would be addressed and if they heeded, this problem would have been addressed long ago,” he told The Nation.
Emphasising that a great majority of Fulanis are far from being interested in violent conflicts, he wondered why “anyone would contemplate an unrealistic law like the one seeking to ban open grazing in Nigeria.
“It is just a misconception that there should be no open grazing in Nigeria; in the entirety of Africa, there is nowhere open grazing is banned.
“There is no country where there are lots of cows, including South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, there is nowhere you can tell me that there is total ban on open grazing.
“What is normally available is that there should be open grazing for those people who think it is traditional and cultural to do it because that is their only form of exercise, leisure and pleasure because that is their culture; we also have grazing reserves for those who would want to start learning how to settle and then the ranches for those who are wealthy and into livestock only for commercial purposes,” he stated.
Speaking further on the non-realistic expectation of changing nomadic Fulanis’ ways of life and cultural orientation with government fiat, he alleged that some armed men from Benue were bent on attacking herdsmen who had left the state, adding that provocations should not be allowed to push Fulanis into nationwide reactions that may be more dangerous than the insurgency being witnessed in the North East.
According to him, “They were planning to attack some herdsmen that left Benue State, so the thing is serious and we have told people before that this thing has the potential of causing proper breakdown of law and order not only in the north but the entire country.
“The Boko Haram crisis in the enclave of Borno and Yobe took over the entire North-East and started coming down even to Abuja, how much more something involving Fulanis who are found in all parts of the country and across West Africa?
“You know their population, they are over 18 million in Nigeria, you can see that there is no state that we don’t have Fulani presence, so if these people start any insurgency now or any resistance, you can imagine what will happen and they are just people who know everywhere in the jungles and the bushes,” Bayari added.
According to the Fulani leader, who emphasized that the cow is far more important to a Fulani man than its monetary value, the only realistic solution towards achieving lasting peace is to modify the law against grazing, by accommodating the very rich who can afford to have ranches, as well as those who can only continue their nomadic ways.
“They can modify it in such a way that for those Fulanis, there are some of us like me, my parent for the past 50 years have been settled in one place and from the small place we inherited from our grandparents who came to settle in a virgin land and when it was not enough, we bought from other natives there.
“We built our houses there and we are settling there but still we move the cows on a seasonal basis when there is no grass and water; we move them for three to four months to go where there is green pasture and when the farmers want to start cultivating, they come back to where we keep them again till next year.
“Then, there are the Muritala Nyakos, the Buharis, the Abdullahi Adamus, who may have ranches worth billions. As a Fulani man, I am looking forward to owning my own ranch, somebody does not have to outlaw my only means of livelihood because I cannot afford a ranch and then you know that I have brothers in the village that are over 60 who have never gone to school; they don’t share from the national cake at whatever level and with this law, how do you expect them to survive?
“They sleep in the bush all because of the animals and once the animals are not there, they see a total extinction of their own generation, not even an individual.
“As Nigerians, we have right to life based on the constitution and international law and the right to life does not go without a means of sustenance of life and when you want to eliminate the sustenance of these people, they will fight as if you are telling them to lie down so that you can take knife and slaughter them,” Alhaji Sale Bayari stated.
