Senator Adegbenga Kaka was the Deputy Governor of Ogun State between 1999 and 2003. He also represented Ogun East in the Senate between 2011 and 2015. In this interview with Ayo Esan, he proffers solutions to the frequent Fulani herdsmen attacks and the recurring fuel scarcity in the country. Excerpts:
What is the solution to the recurring Fulani herdsmen problem across the country?
There is no doubt that we have had negligence of responsibilities over the past years. And the negligence is not limited to the menace of the Fulani herdsmen. If you look at the issue of Niger Delta militants, if you look at the issue of Boko Haram, they were also warranted because people shirked in their responsibilities. So, there is no doubt that the farmers generally, both of livestock and crops, have been neglected over the years. So, I am trying to base my submission on the basics, because, you can’t build something on nothing and expect it to stand. So if what we needed to have done had been done, we wouldn’t be having this. The clamouring now for ranching, for cattle’s colonies, wouldn’t have been necessary. There is no doubt that the crop farmers must survive on their sweat, and the people of Nigeria must eat crops produced by them. So also, the livestock farmers must survive and the people must continue to drive their livelihood from animal proteins. So what we need to do is to think ahead of this type of danger. It is not when valuable lives are lost that we start to look for solution. We know that internationally, agriculture is subsidised but without being particular about a certain administration, I can tell you that our votes for agriculture is more or less a peanut.
Convertibility of farm produce is one of the ways out…bye-products of the farmers’ crops can be converted and made edible for the Fulani’s animals, apart from the fresh grasses they have always fed upon. This way, the farmers, who are into business, will make a lot of money
But the federal budget is different from a state’s budget…
Yes, it is sad that a federal budget cannot move a state agriculture forward effectively. A situation where our annual budget ranges between one and three per cent of the total budget is despicable. What can that achieve? And mind you, out of the said three per cent, the overhead is going to cart away over 70 per cent, with nothing left for capital expenditure. So, when you look at it fundamentally, you will see that the crises we witnessed in Benue and Taraba recently were as a result of negligence on the part of all of us.
So, what’s your recipe against recurrence?
Now, coming specifically to what happened in Benue, I doubt if there is any one that it does not touch. If you look at it, whatever be the grievances, that should not lead to the killing of human beings, not to talk of mass elimination bothering on genocide, so to say. So when you now look at it, the question is, how do we get out of the problem? The Fulani herdsmen are not just surfacing, they have been with us for ages and we have been seeing the signs of these clashes. It has been there since over two decades ago, if not three decades. So we have been seeing it; we ought to have nipped it in the bud by having a balance between the nomadic herdsmen and the farmers. Convertibility of farm produce is one of the ways out, really. We know it that the produce are converted for human needs and also for animal needs .So also, the issue at stake is talking about ruminants, not monogastrics. Monogastrics are animals like chickens, pigs and others that can survive on the same food with lesser fibers. But in the case of ruminants, they digest all fibroid plants.
So, bye-products of the farmers’ crops can be converted and made edible for the Fulani’s animals, apart from the fresh grasses they have always fed upon. This way, the farmers, who are into business, will make a lot of money. The fresh grasses may be preferred. But there is opportunity for preservation of grasses during the rainy season and that is why we talk of gavage- you can administer the food through modern method by forcing it down the throat of the cow, for instance. Then in silages, you find a way of preserving it raw so that the animals can have continuous feeding throughout the year.
We also know that the animals are better off if you confine them. Their productivity is better, and there is less stress on Fulani herdsmen if you can make them sedentary .At a time in this country, somebody talked about nomadic education, that was Professor Jubril Aminu. They started it; where has it ended? A lot of millions of naira were wasted on it, out of the federally collected revenue.
Yes, we need to subsidise agriculture but it must be meaningfully subsidised in such a way that there would be reasonable and efficient harmonious coexistence between the farmers and the herdsmen, which we failed to do.
Why do you think the recurring fuel scarcity in the country has not abated, especially this one that began since the Yuletide?
I have said it since 2005, out of concern for what was happening. I wrote a letter to the then president, when we were having excess crude oil money and I was having the fear that the excess crude oil money would be squandered, as it used to be, and it was squandered actually. I wrote that letter and gave suggestions. The suggestion had been reechoed by the present Vice President when he talked of the modular refineries. I specifically suggested that before 2005.
The four refineries we are having are already obsolete. So, between 2005 and now, it is almost 12 years. So you can now believe that it is more obsolete now. That they should try either to sell it outright, if they can get buyers, or scrap them and build six micro/medium refineries in the six geo-political zones. And thereafter, privatise them. I said this at that time because I was aware that people were clamouring for privatisation and deregulation of the downstream sector. So if it must be deregulated, then there is no reason people should be talking about subsidy, which was not in existence before. This is because the subsidy we have been seeing was due to inefficiency of our processes and operation. Inefficiency being caused by wastages in our operation, caused by handling charges to and fro, of taking our crude oil abroad, paying the freighting, the shipment, and the insurance, and so on and so forth. And you now pay the same cost to bring the product back. That is double handling, to and fro, and you now say you want to pass that to the consumers. On top of it all, the subsidy will not even get to the final consumers but it would be hijacked by some middlemen who call themselves marketers and those who call themselves government officials.
We have turned NNPC to a cash cow, where anything goes; where inefficiency is the order of the day. People are just populating the place as workers when the result coming from them cannot meet 10 per cent of the efficiency and effectiveness we have in the private sector.
