Ranching Reserves In The Middle Belt States Is Legally Depositing Killers Among Their Victims

There is a saying among the Tiv people that captures the vulnerability of those who submit too easily: “Ka mtile u iyongu i teen i ye,” which translates roughly as it is the posture of a ram that leads to selling it. That proverb has never been more painfully relevant than it is today, as the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development under a FULANI man, Alhaji Idi Maiha announces its National Ranching Policy pilot programme targeting Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, Kaduna and Adamawa states alongside the FCT. The ram has been standing still for too long and the auctioneer has grown bold.

Let us be honest about what this policy is, what it has always been under different names, and who it has always served. Since the APC assumed federal power, Nigerians have watched successive attempts to legally settle Fulani herders in Middle Belt communities especially in Benue and Plateau.

First it was cattle colonies. Then it was Ruga settlements. Then the 1000 Houses initiative. Each time, the people resisted and the scheme collapsed. Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State stood with his people and the legal deposit of Fulani herders into Benue could not be consummated. Now it returns with yet another name. The minister is different. The framing is different. But the project is the same.

Alhaji Idi Maiha justified his selection of these six states by stating that they recorded some of the highest incidences of farmer-herder conflicts in recent years. That justification must be confronted directly because it is a fabrication of the most dangerous kind.

 There has never been a farmer-herder conflict in Benue State. There has never been one in Plateau. The word conflict implies two parties in confrontation with each other. What happens in the Middle Belt is not conflict. It is invasion. Unidentified Fulani militias arrive at night or in the early hours of morning, slaughter entire communities, burn homes and farms, displace survivors and then vanish into locations that Nigerian security agencies have repeatedly failed to identify or pursue. The victims do not retaliate because there is no one to retaliate against after the attackers disappear. Retaliation never happened, therefore there was never a conflict. Calling what happens in Benue a farmer-herder conflict is like describing a massacre as a disagreement. It is an insult layered on top of a crime.

The people killed are not exclusively farmers. They are civil servants. They are students. They are traders and teachers and clergy and native livestock farmers who have tended cattle on their ancestral land for generations without any Fulani presence among them. The killing is indiscriminate and its targets are predominantly Christian. This is the reality that the minister’s language of farmer-herder conflict is designed to obscure.

Now consider the audacity of the proposed solution. The government is selecting the very states where these killings are concentrated and proposing to legally build infrastructure for the same Fulani herders whose militia arms are responsible for those killings. Housing. Veterinary clinics. Schools. Economic hubs. All of it reserved for people who are not indigenous to these states, funded by the taxes of the people being killed, and placed on the land of the communities being displaced. What is the rational explanation for this, other than that the legal occupation is meant to complete what the illegal invasion has been softening the ground for?

President Tinubu told the Nigerian Council of Bishops that in politics everything is fair. Christians in the Middle Belt and across this country have now seen exactly what that means. A Muslim running mate against every convention of power sharing. Christian communities slaughtered with impunity. American designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern for religious persecution while his government spent public money on Washington lobbying firms to sanitise the image, not to stop the killing. Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir openly taunting non-Muslim citizens of this country as infidels while the governor of Kano State applauded, and not a word of rebuke came from the presidency. Everything is fair.

The most painful dimension of this crisis is the posture of those who should be protecting the Middle Belt. Sons and daughters of this region are among the loudest cheerleaders of this administration, ready to campaign and deliver votes for a government that is overseeing their systematic dispossession. And Governor Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia’s relationship with those responsible for the killing of his own constituents makes Benue State uniquely vulnerable at this moment. Samuel Ortom was not perfect, but when Fulani policy came for Benue, Ortom stood at the gate. That gate is now open.

We state our position without ambiguity. Any federal initiative that is truly national will involve all 36 states and the FCT equally. This policy involves six states and the president’s own state is conspicuously absent from the list. We are not interested. We will not surrender our ancestral land to a ranching policy designed for our killers. The ram must change its posture.

Celphas Iyorhen 

A Concerned Citizen from the Middle-Belt