A PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF RUGA SETTLEMENT IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Background to the RUGA Policy
There is no gainsaying the fact that the two major primary stakeholders (herders and farmers) involved in the farmer-herder‟s conflict play a vital role in the agricultural sector of the Nigerian economy. Data from Federal Livestock Department reveals that as at 2010, 192,313,325 of poultry chicken, 16,577,962 cattle, 56,524,075 goats, 35,519,759 sheep and 7,471,730 pigs constituted the livestock population of the country (Okewu et al., 2019:149). Pastoralists, therefore, have been able to meet the meat demand in Nigeria without government subsidy for generations with a current estimated cattle population of about 19 million (Onyeama, Gideon & Ekwugha, 2018:29). Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) also reveals that, as at the first quarter of 2019, crop production remains the major driver of the agricultural sector and accounted for 85% of agriculture Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while the entire agricultural sector contributed 21.91% percent of Nigeria‟s 16.42 trillion real GDP during same period (NBS, 2019).
Thus, intervention in a conflict involving actors as invaluable as above would naturally demand a carefully conceived, planned, tested and confident policy such that none of the parties would feel alienated, antagonised or deprived by its government. It would also demand that the government be swift, pragmatic and proactive in halting the escalation of such conflict with concerted efforts at proposing justifiable, equitable and sustainable solutions to such problems.
Coincidentally, the herder-farmer‟s conflict escalated tremendously with the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani, as the head of Nigeria‟s federal executive in 2015. This situation was further complicated by the media‟s unprofessional reporting and framing of the conflict in a sensational manner without "considerations of context, accuracy, and fairness, balance and completeness, integrity and responsibility" (Ciboh, 2017). All eyes were therefore on the Buhari-led administration to take drastic and unapologetic decisions that would spite offenders irrespective of their ethnic affinities. The administration tended to be very slow in defining the threats and the trajectories of the conflicts; being proactive or modelling an all-encompassing policy to mitigate the effects of the conflict on parties.
Albeit discriminate military option1 was used as a response mechanism to attacks, the federal government kick-started its „mitigation‟ plans by proposing the establishment of cattle colonies2 where designated land areas will be exclusive for herding across the country to “militate against future re-occurrence”, even as the conflict was escalating. Three bills (National Grazing Reserve [Establishment] Bill, 2015 [HB 448]; National Grazing Routes and Reserve Commission [Establishment] Bill, 2016 [HB 539]; and National Grazing Reserves Agency [Est, etc] Bill, 2016) (seeLegist, 2019) were sponsored and sent to the National Assembly to that effect but all failed to sail through due to the opprobrium the policy mustered from different divides of the country as well as its rejection by state governors who are statutorily the landlords of their domains (Okewu et al., 2019:145). The Minister of State, Agriculture, Mr. Heineken Lokpobiri had in a public lecture on May 2016, hinted the governments' desire to explore the ranching option but this proposal was rejected by the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), an umbrella body for herders, which insisted on the earlier proposed cattle colony option (Premium Times, 2016a). Subsequently, the federal government had proposed the importation of grass from Brazil for herders – a proposal which was supported by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture, Senator Abdullahi Adamu on May 8, 2016 (Opejobi, 2016). As a proactive measure, the governor of Kaduna State Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, having noticed that most attacks were perpetrated by Fulani from the neighbouring countries of Cameroon, Niger Republic, Chad, Mali and Senegal, "trace[d] some of these people…to tell them that there is a new governor who is like them and has no problem paying compensations for lives lost" and begging them to put a stop to the killing.3
Other proposals were also made at educating and maintaining a coordinated information chain between herders. For instance, on May 2019, the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) disclosed its issuance of a broadcasting license (October 8, 2018-October 8, 2019) to the federal government for Nomadic Radio which aim would be specifically for nomadic education "for the interest of migrant fishermen, herders, hunters, farmers, and migrants", as one of the grand strategies at ending farmer-herder's clashes (Elebeke, 2019). This policy was lauded by MACBAN. It was, however, rejected by southern stakeholders who faulted it on the hysteria of fulanisation – a coinage used to express Fulani overlord-ship over the socio-political terrain of Nigeria. The immediate past Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh had, on May 21, 2019, divulged some information, confirming that the “just 10 days ago, President Muhammadu Buhari approved a programme called the Ruga settlement…to avert any conflict between the herders and the farmers (Ameh, 2019). Within the same period, meetings were arranged between the federal government and MACBAN, with considerations to resuscitate an earlier plan by the government to, in 2014, pay the latter a sum of N100 billion for mini-ranching facilities (Aworinde, 2019).
At the Fourth Global Diary Congress Africa in July 2019, the federal government through the Minister of Agriculture (represented by the Director, Animal Husbandry Services, Mr. Bright Wategire) also hinted that it has started “something in animal identification and traceability system…to reduce cattle rustling…and help us get reliable data of animals that we have in this country” (Alimi, 2019). It is worthy to note that debates engineered by the media on palliatives and mitigations plans presented by the government have portrayed the latter as being pro-Fulani and its policies as herder-appeasement policies. Questions are asked of justice, compensations, and mitigation plans for the farmers who are perceived as victims. This is the political climate that circumvented the implementation of the RUGA policy.
2.2 Causes of the Conflict
Indisputably, Fulani pastoralists are the major group involved in cattle rearing business in Nigeria. According to Belo (2013) cited in Ndubuisi (2018) “they own over 90% of the country’s livestock which accounts for one-third of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) in particular and 3.2% of the country’s GDP in general. But these have been affected by the nihilist ideologies and frequent attacks on innocent farmers and citizens by the Fulani herdsmen. The conflict has also affected the huge economic gains the nomads initially contributed to the nation’s gross national product (GNP) and affected the day-to-day relationships which exist among the trio of Fulani herdsmen, sedentary farmers, and other ethnic groups in Nigeria (Ndubuisi, 2018:1; Olayiwola, 2019: 99).
The major factor responsible for this strained relationship between the Fulani herdsmen and sedentary farmers across the country is climate change. When there is a change in the weather condition, there is always arid weather, followed by a prolonged drought and desertification particularly in the northern part of the country. The effect of this is the immediate migration to the southern parts of the country where there are sufficient rains during the wet season in search of green pastures for their cattle. Gleick (2010) cited in Ndubuisi (2018: 4) while attesting to this, opines that climate change has been identified as the greatest and single factor that induced migration and population displacement, evident in the case of Nigeria’s Fulani nomads who are usually pushed out of their ancestral lands to the southern regions in search of green lands for their cattle. Apart from climate change there are other natural and fundamental causes of the conflict between farmers and Fulani herdsmen. One of such causes is the shrinking of ecological space occasioned by the blossoming population who, in turn, take up some of the immediately available lands for crop farming, particularly in the Northern Nigeria. In other words, green lands that were initially available for cattle grazing are gradually being converted to farmlands and residential areas inhibited by the over blown population, leading to ecoscarcity (Okoli & Atelhe, 2013: 80). In the southern regions, it is purely a case of encroaching without notice on the people’s farmlands in the name of cattle rustling.
Ndubuisi (2018: 3) identified unauthorized encroachment into farmlands by cattle rustlers and the damages they cause to crops as one of the major causes of farmers and Fulani herdsmen conflict. Fallow lands left to replenish after a long period of use are also damaged by cows. This is also identified as one of the causes of farmers and Fulani herdsmen conflict. Also identified is lack of political will by the Government and its agencies to arrest and punish the Fulani offenders engaged in the killing of farmers and other members of the host communities across the country. Most provocative is the unwillingness of the government of President Buhari to arrest and prosecute even a single Fulani offender since he came to office. This line of argument reinforces the researchers’ suspicion that there is a foul play or conspiracy on the part of government. This has resulted into reprisal attacks for self defense from the feuding parties. In this regard, conflict is not only a matter of self defense but an egocentric drive on the part of the Fulani herdsmen since their major source of livelihood is being threatened by climate and farmers in the country.
According to Global Terrorism Index Report (2018), the Fulani ethnic militia killed over 1,700 people in the year 2018 alone. This figure was estimated to have surpassed the number of people killed by the Boko Haram terrorists in the same year! Countless attacks and killings have further been recorded in 2019. In 2014, over 1,169 deaths were recorded with majority of those killed predominantly from among the Christian populations in the North and generally in the South (Global Terrorism Index Report, 2018). Areas mostly affected are located in the Middle Belt region, particularly in the states of Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba, and pushing up north to Kaduna State, with over 3,641 people killed in the clashes between 2015 and 2018 in those areas. The southern states of Anambra, Delta, Edo, Ebonyi, Enugu, Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, and Rivers state have also been affected by the Fulani herders’ onslaught (Olayiwola, 2019).
2.3 Implications of Establishing Ruga Settlements
There are a lot of controversies surround the suspended Ruga settlements for Fulani herders across the country. The amazing fact in all of the drama of the Ruga policy is the insistence of the Buhari administration to forge ahead to establish Ruga settlements in spite of oppositions from civil society groups, socio-cultural organizations, state governments of the Middle Belt and Southern regions of the country and individuals. The Buhari-led federal government alleged that establishing Ruga will be an alternative means to improve the nation’s economic drive to create jobs and will give the people the opportunity to have access to credit facilities. Furthermore, the government argued that Ruga will create security for pastoral families and curtail cattle rustling, as well as provide a palliative as an alternative to peace and security of lives and properties in Nigeria (Mudashir et al., 2019). Besides the massive loss of lives and properties occasioned by the conflict between farmers and Fulani herdsmen all over the country, the major reason for opposition from this group of people in recent times is the re-submission of the executive bill to the Nigerian NASS, seeking to control all the waterways and their banks by the Federal Government. In short, this action reinforces the conspiracy inherent in the Ruga programme.
Indeed, most critics perceived the Ruga plan to be a grand conspiracy, coming from President Buhari and his allies of the Fulani and Muslim extractions in the North. The critics saw the ruga conspiracy as a ploy by government to acquire ancestral lands which belonged to the Middle-Belt and Southern peoples, to accommodate and settle their age-long roving Fulani nomads and kinsmen from the West African and Central African regions of the continent in Nigeria. The overall aim, they argued, is to spread Islam to the MiddleBelt and Southern regions of Nigeria which are predominantly Christians; and thereby, colonize the space. This line of thought was strongly supported by the MiddleBelt Leaders Forum, as well as a handful civil society groups and state governors of the regions of the Middle-Belt and the South when they described the intended cattle settlement as a plot to dethrone ancestral communities for the Fulani tribe. Virtually all state governors in the South of Nigeria condemned the planned Ruga programme, including members of the ruling All Progressive Congress party who were bipartisan on the Ruga issue, and came to the conclusion that the Federal Government had fallen short of being sincere with the Ruga settlement programme. And, they vowed not to cede even a portion of their lands to the Federal Government for the Ruga settlement programme. Instead, they advised anyone willing to do the business of cattle rearing, to approach the government of the state concerned, and buy lands to establish ranches under the prevailing regulations in the state, as affirmed by the Supreme Court. This is because land in any state is vested in the governor and not in the Federal Government (see Olusegun, 2019; Makinde & Okechukwu, 2019).
The Director of the Center for Social Justice, Eze Onyekpere, in an interview with the Sunday Punch, cited in Makinde and Okechukwu (2019), argued that it was not quite clear why the Buhari administration was determined to commit huge resources of the nation’s into developing the private business of herders living in Nigeria whom he had once categorically declared as mostly foreigners from neighbouring North African countries and who were certainly NOT Nigerians! Eze, thus, argued that under the Land Use Act, land can only be acquired for overriding public interests or purposes. The question as to what is the public purpose in cattle rearing is yet to be answered by the Buhari-led Federal Government. It, therefore, means that the Federal Government, by the Ruga settlement plan, is justifying violence and crimes such as the Fulani cattle herders in the Nigerian space have been involved. Therefore, the implication is that when people commit murder, arson and undue violence, like the Fulani cattle breeders in Nigeria, they should be compensated with community or state land instead of being subjected to criminal charges and prosecuted accordingly (See Makinde & Okechukwu, 2019).
By this singular act, Buhari has created the impression that the Federal Government is only interested in altering the demographics and population dynamics of states with the influx of individuals of doubtful countries of origins. There is no doubt President Buhari’s action is intended to undermine the country’s internal security and rattle its collective unity. Buhari’s refusal to consult with state governors, civil society groups, socio-cultural organizations and representatives of nationality groups on this issue, created a suspicion as to what his intentions really were.
The Middle Belt Forum and Southern Leaders came up with a communiqué after its meeting reaffirmed its suspicion of a conspiracy by the Buhari government to colonize the entire nation, under the guise of Ruga settlement, and thereby set his tribes men over and above every other tribe in Nigeria so as to be able to execute his well-thought out agenda to Islamize the country. The forum argued that the insistence of the Federal Government to establish Ruga settlements around the country, in spite of its total rejection by the general public, can only come from a government that is irresponsive, and one that is not interested in the unity of the country, in the consideration of the menace orchestrated all over the country by Fulani herdsmen, none of whom the government of the day had deemed it fit to prosecute nor call to order. It stated also that the Fulani herdsmen in the last four years of President Buhari’s ascension to power have turned non-Fulani communities in the country into killing fields with the government turning a blind eye to all their crimes while using state instruments to defend themselves from prosecution. Since the government is yet to try and convict any one of the herdsmen for murder and arson, to establish Ruga settlements in non-Fulani areas would give the herdsmen more effrontery to attack and kill the people. The group, therefore, challenged the Federal Government to tell Nigerians and the world in general, the court of law where any of the criminal herdsmen have been tried for all the kidnappings, raping, banditry and the brutal killing of men, women and children, and the willful destruction of farmlands in and around the country since Buhari came to power (See Sahara Reporters, New York, 2019). The pertinent question that needs an urgent answer is, if the herdsmen as wonderers can perpetrate untold hardship and crimes against host communities what would happen when the government forces the herdsmen on the communities as land owners?
The horrifying tales of the gruesome attacks perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen around the country has answered this pertinent question. Such gruesome attacks are still very fresh in the minds of Nigerians; particularly on the minds of those people in the affected communities. Yet, the President Buhari-led administration did virtually nothing to bring the situation under control. Instead, the government was bent on forging ahead with its planned programme of establishing Ruga settlements for Fulani herdsmen in non-Fulani areas of the country. Okere (2019) argued that the announcement in the month of May 2019, by the Federal Government of Nigeria, that it had acquired a government funded Amplitude Modulation (AM) Radio Broadcast license to educate herdsmen, and to foster peace and harmony between the group and crop farmers wherever they were in collision, is a confirmation of an alleged conspiracy. This is so because, in the first instance, the radio station is purely a Fulani one whereas, the various groups that the Fulani comes into conflict with are not Fulani! This is besides the hue and cry in the nation of the alleged advancement to the group of a whopping N100 billion (about $365 million) by the Buhari government, to establish cattle ranches all around the country and/or to halt the purported criminality among the cattle rustlers. Okere, thus, argued that the June 25, 2019 announcement by the Federal Government reiterating its stand to establish Ruga settlements for herdsmen in the thirty-six states in the country did also aggravated the stand of the anti-Ruga groups across Nigeria. Most provocative and insulting to the sensibilities of Nigerians was the position of the Federal Government through its Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Garba Shehu, that the Ruga settlement program which is optional to state governments would find advantage in providing economic benefits to all Nigerian citizens (Okere, 2019).
The socio-economic and cultural group, Miyetti Allah Kauta Hore, generally referred to as Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), the umbrella body under which the marauding Fulani pastoralists and herders operate, reaffirmed its unalloyed support for the Ruga settlement programme, and insisted that government must continue with the project no matter whose ox was gored. The association’s General Secretary, Baba Uthman Ngelzarma’s utterances also provoked counter-responses from anti-Ruga groups all over the country. For instance, the Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba group alleged that Ruga settlement programme was a deliberate ploy by the Federal Government to turn such settlements into local government areas for Fulani ethnic group in the future since the Federal Government was planning to give local governments autonomy. Ohanaeze Ndigbo, an apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, also conceived the planned Ruga settlement as a conspiracy to impose the Fulani ethnic group on the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Wole Soyinka, the 1996 prize winner of the Nobel Laureate for literature, while speaking at the inauguration of the United Nations Solutions 17 SDG programme in Lagos, argued that the planned Ruga settlement programme would become an explosion in the future if not carefully handled now by Nigerians. At this critical stage, he argued that the Federal Government failed to address the fundamental issues affecting the unity of the country, but instead, provided the cattle herders a sense of impunity. Reiterating the position of the Nobel Laureate, Idada Ikponmwen, a retired military General and former Provost Marshal of the Nigerian Army, argued that the Ruga settlement policy of the Federal Government was a wrong measure, considering the issue of Fulani herdsmen and their banditry activities in the Middle-Belt, South-East, SouthSouth, and South-West of Nigeria, with abundant proofs that they were heavily armed militants (Olusegun, 2019; Okere, 2019).
Dr. Agharese Osife, an agricultural economist at the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, argued that the Ruga settlement programme was a deliberate attempt to acquire lands in the 36 states of the federation by the Federal Government for the Fulani herders and never a part of the National Livestock Grazing programme found in states like Kaduna, Bauchi, Borno, Sokoto and Kano (Okere, 2019). According to Garba Shehu, the presidential spokesperson, in justifying the need for establishing Ruga settlements, he argued that Ruga settlement is not just a settlement but an organized large expanse of land that will settle migrant pastoral families, animal farmers and herders with adequate basic amenities such as schools, hospitals, road networks, veterinary clinic, markets, and manufacturing entities that will process and add value to meats and animal products. By this, Garba Shehu tried to allay the suspicion of Nigerians that the Ruga program is nothing else but only a means to resolve the farmers and herdsmen conflict and never to indirectly colonize the country for the Fulani ethnic group (Mudashir et al., 2019). These researchers, thus, concur with the position of the anti-Ruga protesters i.e., that the Ruga program was in disguise a conspiracy to conceal the intentions of the Federal Government to acquire community lands and colonize Nigeria for the Fulani tribe.
2.4 Theoretical Framework
The study adopts Chabal’s (2009) twofold conflict theory, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Richard Hofstadter (2008) and Peter Knight’s (2003) conspiracy theories, to examine the actual causes of the conflict between Fulani nomads and sedentary farmers. As well, these theories will help to ascertain the implications of establishing cattle colonies which the government of the day considered as an alternative to peace and security of lives and properties throughout the country.
Chabal’s Twofold Theory
This theory is adopted to depict the actual situation of the conflict between sedentary farmers and Fulani nomads on the one hand, and the role of the Federal Government to resolve this conflict on the other hand, especially as it appertains to the Federal Government’s intent in establishing cattle colonies across the country, seen by critics as a means to undermine the unity of the country. Chabal’s twofold theory, thus, is a clear manifestation of the reality of trying to survive while suffering and smiling which is a true reflection of Bahari’s prejudice over the conflict between crop farmers and Fulani nomads in the former’s territory. According to Chabal (2009) cited in Ezemanaka and Ekumaoko (2018), politics of suffering and smiling explain the legitimacy of a typical African politics that manifests in the Nigeria’s national politics. It also explain the fact that the ordinary people of Africa are often engaged in distinct economic activities in order to earn a living and self esteem or respect such as the nomads and farmers, although most of these activities conflict with the interests of one another.
Ezemanaka and Ekumaoko (2018:34) argued that Africans like other people throughout the world move when necessary in search of economic gains. The reason why Fulani nomads migrate is to gain access to green pasture for their cattle, a custom that increases their economic activities and gains. They argued that this activity has become more often than ever because of the development of pasture lands into permanent habitants and farmlands for the growing re lands are becoming towns and extension of cities thereby creating scarcity of lands for pasture. Also of pertinence is climate change which is also one of the reasons for Fulani herdsmen migration to the southern region of the country where there is sufficient rain and green pasture for their cattle (Agbugu & Onuba, 2015; Nte, 2016).
Chabal (2009), thus, argued that understanding happenings in regional or district politics will require informal political experiences made up of a number of socio-economic and political facets or elements particularly those outside the sphere of traditional academic analytical categorizations. Chabal opines that this will help in understanding formal and informal experiences which were previously neglected, and the causalities that derive from such neglect as a result of the irrational behaviours of leaders or parties in conflict. In other words, Chabal’s proposition explains the role of President Buhari in the conflict between crop farmers and Fulani herdsmen. In essence, the politics of surviving, using migration which is occasioned by climate change, explains the reason why the Fulani nomads migrate to the southern parts of the country in search of fertile grazing grounds for their cattle and the desperate search of permanent solution to these problems by the President of the Federal Republic who is also a Fulani by tribe.
President Buhari’s hesitation to address the issues surrounding this conflict has been attributed to the fact that he has compassion for his kinsmen who are struggling to sustain their major means of livelihood in the face of terrible droughts and reduced pastures occasioned by climate change in their lands. The consequence of his actions or inactions is likely to undermine the unity of the country. Whether it is intentional or not, his actions have failed Nigerians.
Conspiracy Theory
Conspiracy theory, like every other discourse in the social sciences, has definitional controversies. It will therefore require explicit explanations to provide a meaning to the concept. Conspiracy theory was said to have emerged in the wake of unsettling events such as economic shocks, mass shooting, terrorism, among others (Monica Jimenez, 2019). There are two schools of thought which harp on why the theory proliferates in our contemporary age. The first school is sustained by individualistic framework pioneered by Richard Hofstadter (2008) and his associates. This group argued that those who conspire to commit crime or commit any other form of offences have a paranoid personality and they use other persons as scapegoats. They also possess the “us versus them world view”. Adherents of this group also argued that conspiratorial thinking is associated with marginalized and less powerful group of people in the society. The second school which was championed by Peter Knight (2003) viewed conspiracy from a cultural sociology perspective, with emphasis on pervasiveness of the secrecy of the government. This theory raises the awareness about behind the scene information and the cynicism exhibited towards corporate and government powers (Korta, 2018: 31).
Conspiracy theorists believe that when an organization acts covertly, it tends to achieve a malevolent end. Hence, the theory explains the reasons why some events occur in our societies like the emergence of ethno-nationalism groups or the new radical Islamic groups, and such events that provoke conspiracy by some sinister state-sponsored terrorist groups, etc. This means that every event is traceable to a cause or circumstances (See Barkun, 2003: 3; Marmura, 2014 cited in Benjamin, 2017). In some circumstances, conspiracy can lead to conflict, genocide, terrorist attack and/or a full scale war. The conflict between farmers and Fulani herdsmen is perceived as a deliberate conspiracy by Islamic fundamentalists to carry out Islamic Jihad on non Muslims and moderate Muslim extractions. Weeks after the Cattle Colony bill debacle in Nigeria, the re-presentation of the self-same executive bill repackaged as Ruga Settlement bill to the National Assembly is perceived in some quarters as a deliberate attempt by the Fulani tribal president and his henchmen to re-colonize Nigeria through the establishment of the colonies or settlements for cattle across the country. The opinion is that this is the highest conspiracy in recent time which can be better imagined than experienced.