As it is the case with Nigeria, then and now, the human history cannot itself deny the many cattle-rearing situations that had confronted it from time immemorial. This is evidently so in most parts of the world. Northern America-the Spaniards and the Mexican cowboys who were accustomed to moving from one place to the other in search of conducive land purposely for the convenience of rearing in America-is our typical reference. How they lived one with the other? What respect designed the constitution of principles by which these two traders share the ‘peaceability’ of the same geographical need?
Answer to these questions and many more not expressed here will certainly be recorded as a historical surprise which deserves nothing less than emulation from a third-world country like Nigeria! It is not however surprising that, by contrast with that amiable situation—such as we do not now have here in this part of the world, ‘conducive land’ (what in Nigeria is understood by herders to mean farmlands), most certainly, was not arbitrarily reached or seized from owners or farmers. Instead, what was obtainable was that, the government as well as the concerned private landowners helped to appropriate some portion of land particularly to station herders’ cattle for sectoral efficiency and avoidance of the simple confrontations which were often spurred by the destruction of crops only by straying young cows. It is by this way that the ranching system was considerably introduced as a form of solution ever since the farmer-cowboy relationship itself has appeared inseparable.
According to history, ranching successfully presented itself to be the most reliable panacea to the social conundrum that fetched from farmer-herder’s dispute. The ranching system is a public peace maintenance programme which tends towards providing lands (otherwise identified as the settlement) on lease to rearers or cowboys for the effective raising of animals such as cattle, sheep, etc. without fear of infiltration or intrusion. It further maintains a single policy of avoiding conflict of trade between farmers and herders, thereby allowing for peaceful coexistence and the eschewal of otiose bloodletting, which on the contrary has since beset herders and farmers in Nigeria. It is also a recorded fact that those who handled cattle husbandry were commonly called cowboys, herders, or rearers who traditionally were observed to have been moving from one place to another purposely in search of green pasture. This continued until the introduction of the ranching system where they were later addressed as ranchers. But before then, they would consciously roam the lands with the constant consciousness of avoiding intrusion on farm crops or of farmers’ settlements till settlements were also subsequently allotted to them.
The Spaniards and the Mexican rearers were careful not to infiltrate or intrude farms, let alone devastate crops and useful plants. But, in the Nigerian situation, it is quite unfortunate that most of the haunted ‘green pastures’ or ‘conducive land’ are viable farms with growing seeds, crops and plants which are readily owned by struggling farmers who then have turned out unhappy with the constant herders’ infiltration and devastation of their farm plants. It is at this sticking point that the often notorious and bloodthirsty conflicts, which ensued afterwards, unquestionably present itself in need of urgent attention. As its own responsive action, however, the federal government introduced a settlement plan, popularly identified as the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA), in May 11, 2019, with the main objective of solving this rampant herder-farmer conflict that was (and is still) helplessly ravaging the country. The implementation process of the idea was noticed to be flawed first by the then Benue State government who later rejected the plan as a contriving plot to establish another territory for a certain ethnic group within existing territories. He was immediately supported by other eminent leaders in the southern parts of the country to reject what seemed to be a misinterpreted idea. To them, it was an expansionist conspiracy!
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It is no more a hard and unanswerable question that such rejection was informed by the ethno-religious consciousness that Nigerians had been steeped in from time immemorial. Judging by the attitude of their actions and the tone of their impunity down historical timeline, the Fulani are suspected by other tribes to have imbued themselves with some supremacist orientations-such that is even being indirectly encouraged by the presidential silence of President Buhari. Do further details of fact not indirectly explaining also that the same consciousness for the suggested supremacy may be feeding these northern herders from far away north with an uncommon confidence and temerity to displace the southern farmers in the south?
Even in their own lands? Despicable, isn’t it (if so)? Unfortunately, this same sinister consciousness that is suggestively observed to have characterised the beginning of this herder-farmer conflict also strives to remind each local tribe of the need to begin to yell at other foreign tribes to not only learn to respect boundaries, but it also remind these local tribesmen and women with the necessity to attempt a disharmonisation of the unity which seems to hold, even today, as Nigeria. Our very recent examples are the issues surrounding the Oduduwa agitations for national freedom and the risk of imminent arrest of Sunday Igboho pervading the air.
On a last note, it must be reiterated that green pastures are edible arrangements for cows-our focus animal here. They are inferentially understood to be geographical locations where crises are least expected other than peace, equity and justice. With crises, violence, allegations of intrusion, and injustice, ‘green pasture’, ‘conducive land’, or any other term like it becomes self-contradictory; thus, it then carries an obvious understanding that the purpose of criminal herders is not to look for ‘green pasture’, but to look for trouble which not only settle for the maiming of farmers and destablization of southern agriculture; it, notwithstanding, settles to surreptitiously establish some expansionist conspiracy, which further confirms the negative ethnic consciousness with which Nigerians are imbued. This remains as the infertile land on which the ranching system, even if introduced as the only suffering solution, will never make it to the light of any day in Nigeria.
Odunayo, a teacher writes via afolabisamuel.odunayo@gmail.com