Grief stricken as this author was over the recent spate of mindless killings of citizens in various parts of the country, and of which the massacre of defenseless and innocent indigenes of Benue State by marauding Fulani herdsmen, served as a poster case, one of the most gripping reminiscences for him was the story of ‘Bauchi Meat’. As many Nigerians who enjoyed the innocence of the 1970s may recall, ‘Bauchi Meat’ referred to a beef-supply service, whereby fresh meat produced in Bauchi, was frozen and supplied round the country in refrigerated vehicles. Operated then by the Bauchi State administration, the frozen meat was distributed nationwide through refrigerated trucks and railway wagons and was well received in whatever location around the country where it was marketed. This author still recalls how the meat was received in Port Harcourt as housewives and even working class men abandoned work and trooped to Port Harcourt Railway Terminal, every Wednesday (or so), just to buy the stuff straight from the ‘source’. The unique selling point of ‘Bauchi Meat’ was that it got to the customer fresh, clean and as some claimed, even cheaper than the regular meat sold in the local markets. That was in the 1970s, before the present day widespread usage of computers as well as the revolutionary, hi-tech online communication facilities that reduce the stress in business and commerce today!
In the aftermath of the Benue killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen, reactions flowed in torrents and intensity rather unlike previous killings, and reflecting various shades of opinion, of which the most profitable has been the advisory that such a misfortune should serve as a wake-up call. In specific terms, the expectation captured by the wake-up call is that the politics and processes that drive certain aspects of national life and governance in the country can no more be business as usual, especially when they are fingered for spawning untoward tendencies such as the unprovoked and indefensible killing of Nigerians by fellow Nigerians. It is significant that among those who have towed this line are the President of the Senate Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara.
Their concern along with that of others, could not have been more appropriate given that beyond the 30 month Nigerian Civil War of 1967 – 1970, no other situation has placed the cutting edge of the sword closer to the country’s jugular and by implication offered a bigger threat to its corporate existence. Seen largely as public enemies the implicated killer herdsmen are systematically putting the entire country on edge even at a time when any form of widespread conflagration will confer no advantage to any group in the country, given the likely balance of terror and mutually assured destruction that may trail such an apocalyptic dispensation.
Without much equivocation their wake up advocacy is for the country to learn to do things in a different way that is acceptable to all and sustainable for now and in the future. It is in that context that it remains regrettable that the country where a state like Bauchi had under military rule in the 1970s recognized and exploited the economic benefits of ‘Bauchi Meat’ business, would today degenerate to a level where mindless killings of fellow citizens, take place over the same business of animal husbandry. If Bauchi State could execute such a business deal in the 1970s, why has the country not moved beyond that level almost two generations after? The situation remains nothing short of a paradox featuring institutional resistance to a paradigm shift in the economic development momentum of the country. In a world where animal husbandry and in particular cattle rearing has developed into a money spinner for both operators and respective governments, it is an irony that Nigeria is still talking of open grazing of cattle – a centuries old agrarian culture, which has long outlived its usefulness in the face of the relentless onslaught of contemporary realities of politics, economics, demography and security. And all of this due to some people’s preference to indulge in tunnel thinking whereby they have precluded any other consideration except such as remains in their comfort zone. As an aside, if the task of herding cattle from forests to forests across far flung territories were a noble profession why are the children of the rich not engaged in the enterprise?
For the avoidance of doubt the Benue massacre has intensified some worrisome centrifugal tendencies which are pressing for the disintegration of the country and therefore demand urgent attention from not only the federal but also the states and local governments, as well as all Nigerians who hold this country dear. Thanks to the social media the country is able to monitor some of the highly divisive sentiments presently trending and which in the country’s out-of-control state of socio-political effervescence, are simply poisonous to her corporate existence. For instance, just as there is a strong lobby for denigrating the Anti Open Grazing Laws of Benue and Ekiti States, so there is trending in the social and conventional media, a brain wave whose sponsors are canvassing for rights to apply for permission from the northern state governments for approval to establish piggeries in the latter’s domains. This is even as such a consideration itself remains a taboo in the revered tenets of Islam, which is the dominant religion in such places. Talking of one man’s meat being another’s poison! In the final analysis none of these extreme positions and any other that only offer a widening of the polarities in the country will lead Nigeria anywhere along the path of progress as a nation.
It does not require emphasis that the underdevelopment of the country’s agriculture sector is primarily responsible for the serial clashes between Fulani herdsmen grazing their cattle and farmers in the various flash point farmlands over intensifying competition for access to land for grazing and crop farming. It is in that context too that the recent consideration of creating ‘cattle colonies’ across the country by the government remains a proposal that will prove to be dead on arrival – at least in much of the Southern parts of the country.
It will be much more feasible for the Audu Ogbeh led Ministry of Agriculture to launch immediately a remedial programme that will fast-track the development of business inclined, profit yielding value chain with respect to cattle rearing which will guarantee for the country maximum dividends from Nigeria’s cattle population. The success story of ‘Lake Rice’ which is the result of the collaboration between Kebbi and Lagos States, has simply accentuated the humongous potentials for national economic redemption which the agricultural sector offers.
The beef market can even yield more than may be casually anticipated, while returning to the dinner tables of Nigerians, breakthrough products such as ‘Bauchi Meat’.
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