By Igbonekwu Ogazimorah
Over time, Nigerians had asked if there was any pending Grazing Reserve Bill in the National Assembly. The Senate, which admitted it had a bill proposed in 2008 by Mrs. Zainab Kure and which was abandoned, insisted that there was no such bill at present.
Strangely, shortly after, the House of Representatives owned up to having such a bill and was going ahead to debate it.
Since then, it has been torrents after torrents of rejection by governors. The governor of Oyo State was about the most coherent in his rejection of the bill. He rightly situated the matters of grazing as businesses of individuals, and being quite a statesman, he offered that if any person wanted to take lands to farm, he would be offered, not just on availability, but on the prevailing cost such property are sold to any person.
Nothing can be more realistic and responsive to a people who reposed their trust in a governor.
Other states had declared that they did not have such lands to offer, and attendant upon the recurring troubles associated with herdsmen and their enforcers, it was not appealing for them to permit grazing reserves in their states. This is largely the position of the Middle Belt states which had borne the ferocity of herdsmen menace for decades now.
As a follow-up or fall-out of the predictable volatility of such propositions in the South East, Anambra State government had said it was not considering permitting grazing reserves in the arable land in the state.
Then the recklessness of the soldiers in Aba quickly forced the Abia governor to follow suit. For God’s sake, Abia was not giving any land for any grazing reserve or ranch in the equally megre arable land of Abia.
Strangely, again, Ebonyi declared it was creating reserve routes in its state. Well, that was yet a mere talk of the governor, David Umahi.
But the most baffling of this unfolding drama is what has just been announced in Enugu State, last week, as a bill to create a grazing reserve in each of the three senatorial zones.
This bill, proposed by a certain Chinedu Nwamba, member representing Nsukka East Constituency (same zone as Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi) is driving at making a law, not only to allow for grazing reserves or ranches in the state, but throwing it open, upon the people, that government would, by the bill becoming law, take people’s lands and cause them to be reserved for grazing and ranching of private investors in livestock business.
And I ask, whose land are they actually talking about?
Perhaps, working on the mindset of the Land Use Act, the lawmaker believes that people’s lands, as roguishly envisaged by the Act, would be taken as property of government and handed over to ‘livestock investors’ just like that.
I think there is a mistake somewhere!
In the first place, the major issue with herdsmen in Nigeria, especially in the South East of recent, is not actually grazing of cattle. Cattle have been grazed on South East territories since the conquest of the Igbo in 1970. In the early days, the herdsmen had respected people’s rights and avoided farms. In those days, they were seen as pure, fair-dealing and cultured persons. But today, they have turned rapists, armed robbers, land grabbers, sackers of communities, and general threat to the entire society.
Second, every part of Nigeria, especially South and Middle Belt, is not only sceptical but quite vehement in rejection of any such arrangement as grazing reserves.
Third, has the lawmaker, Nwamba, given his proposed bill the deeper reflection with a view to factoring the acute land shortage problem in the state before he crafted it? Put the other way, has Nwamba waited to ponder why the people of Ukpabi-Nimbo, just like most communities in his beloved Enugu, have been in deep, long and death-threatening battles over farming lands, the most recent – being Ukpabi-Nimbo – resulting in gruesome murder of sleeping natives in the most horrifying manner never known by the community or even their neighbours?
If Nwamba, or the Enugu State Assembly, had given this a thought, could it be something beyond them to even wait a bit and see how this struggle – yes struggle – plays out across Nigeria, before rushing to hammer out a bill, which, if it rides the familiar tide of government bills in Nigeria, will become law in a matter of days?
Members of Enugu Assembly must quickly understand that, by this bill, they are putting the lives of the people who elected them in danger’s way, if not today, in days not even far removed from the present tempo of national politicking.
It cannot be beyond the state government to say, we would wait and see! It is not even beyond the government to actually stand firm against such bill if only on account and memories of those innocent sleeping natives – women, children, aged – cut into most primitive pieces with the hacksaws of the murderous herdsmen.
Being a resident of Enugu since 2001, I am aware that every private business man is entirely on his own in putting together a business of his interest. I have tried out my hand in one or two. You pay down to the last kobo for location, government approval, various taxes (multiple and destructive of course), and even back-hand fulfilment to state mandarins.
Those who are into hotel, hostel, small trade, clothe-making and sales businesses, etc all pay their rents to either the property owner, or where such is for large land areas, negotiate and buy land from the communities in which such businesses would be sited.
Is it not even worrisome that by the drive of some strong hand-wringers, Nigerians and the South East are being made to provide business premises for livestock farmers, willy-nilly?
And wait a minute; it is common knowledge that the government is not even considering going into livestock business or providing for rents, closed in ranches, but is in a haste to provide the entire leverage of business for persons, some travelling from as far as Gabon, Central African Republic (as they claim) with the resources of the people of Enugu, without a thought about the predicable violent backlash.
My worry is that the government of Enugu, while meaning so well for the people, is being brow-beaten into submission to so act by forces we do not know. There is nothing hidden about the governor meaning well in his haste and hunger to develop Enugu. But at the same time, there is nothing hidden about the likely, in fact certain, atrocities this action of creating grazing reserves and ranches will cause the good and very hospitable people of Enugu.
True, the real issues of these herdsmen marauders may be somehow complicated for the uninitiated. To that unfortunate effect, they may consider that it is a way of extending the hospitable attributes of the Enugu man to get into this and get done with it.
No! No, sir!
Much as I do not believe that the herdsmen are the New Martians coming to wipe us out, a government, at least a democratic one, if so pretended, must consider the worries and fears of the people. The onus has moved on the hustlers, I do not mean the so-called rustlers, to stay at a place, do some seasons of self-purge, for Nigerians to begin to consider them with the same fright the world had feared nuclear holocaust.
If a people say they have faced possible genocide in the hands of some others who are not even ready to make changes, who actually mount the roof tops to proclaim their capacity for the most heart-wrenching bestiality, then government must step in to let all things wait until issues are sorted out.
Enugu should not be the first state to proclaim a law granting lands of the natives to private livestock dealers who make no bones about killing people, including entirely uninvolved children, the aged and the sleeping – in their villages, the purest place for the typical African.
Your Excellency, please get this member, Chinedu Nwamba, to stop and think. Pull out the bill now, until we get the clearer picture of the unfolding deadly drama!
• Ogazimorah, former Enugu State Commissioner for Information, wrote from Enugu.