BY MAYOWA SAMUEL
Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, has taken the Federal Government to task on what will become of the assets and structures built on former grazing routes if the 1963 gazette is eventually reproduced.
Ortom who spoke through his Chief Press Secretary, Terver Akase, posed this query to President Muhammadu Buhari in an interview with The Point, saying the Benue State Government had chosen to toe the line of the southern governors of Ondo, Cross River, Enugu, Ekiti, Akwa-Ibom and others to kick against the move.
Recall that President Buhari had, at a media chat in June, expressed his resolve to re-establish the cattle routes and grazing areas gazetted during Nigeria’s practice of regional system of government in 1963, by directing the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to produce the said gazette.
Buhari had said, “What I did was to ask him to go and dig the gazette of the First Republic when people were obeying laws. There were cattle routes and grazing areas. Cattle routes were for when they (herdsmen) were moving upcountry, north to south or east to west. They had to go through there.”
However, Ortom who insisted that re-introducing the cattle routes of the 1960s won’t make any sense in Nigeria of today, said, “Aso Rock may be lying on a former cattle route. If it is so, will you demolish Aso Rock for cows? We are told that the Air Force base in Makurdi is located on an area that cows passed in the past, that is a Federal Government institution.
Will you now go and demolish the Air Force base or move the airport from there so that cows can begin to go to Port Harcourt? Besides, the population has increased so much.”
Furthermore, Governor Ortom, through the Commissioner for Education, Dennis Ityavyar, had in Abuja said that the government would give land to Fulani herdsmen so they could engage in ranching to correct the impression that the people of Benue were against Fulanis.
While buttressing this point, the press secretary charged the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) to rent land for the ranching of their cattle, but warned that cattle rustlers who were caught would be made to face the law.
According to him, the open grazing prohibition and ranches establishment law explains that “if you want to establish a ranch but do not have land, you approach the owner of the land who will notify the ministry of agriculture, who will in turn forward your application to the office of the governor, who will then either approve or decline the application. If the ministry sees that you have violated the law, then the government has the right to revoke your certificate, just like it is done with C of O.”
He said, “I don’t think those who are misinterpreting it have ever read that law because if they have, they would discover that the procedure is very simple.
“If the ministry sees that you have violated the law, then the government has the right to revoke your certificate. The law says in Section 20 that if anyone is caught rustling animals that are in ranches, and the person is found guilty in a competent court of law, he will face severe punishment. The law is protecting only those who have their animals in ranches.”
The governor added that his government might consider providing subsidies for sincere herders, saying, “If the funds are available, there is a possibility that the government can consider subsidizing those who are sincere about the establishment of ranches, it’s something that is doable, why not?”
He added that the public hearing anchored by lawmakers in the three senatorial zones of the state was a good avenue for cattle owners to make their feelings and suggestions known. He berated Miyetti Allah for refusing to attend or send any memo to the hearings, where the clamour of the people for a ban on open grazing was heeded, saying “the will of the people is what is paramount to the government.”
“The people came to say this is what they want; that there should be a law to ban open grazing, so the government couldn’t have said no. Government is there to work for the people, so, if the people unanimously demand for something, you can’t say no. It was at that point that the cattle breeders would have made inputs into that law,” the governor stated.
Admitting the difficulty of people accepting change because of fear, he is, however, hopeful that they will gradually accept it while stressing the need for education of the herders for this positive change to be accepted by them.
“We need to educate the nomads, pastoralists, they deserve education but what I sense is fear. When change comes, people fear a lot. They are afraid of what will happen if they abandon their nomadic way of rearing animals but nothing will happen, they will enjoy it more than their present practice. Elsewhere, people who have ranches, their animals are fatter, healthier and more productive,” he advised.
