It’s like spraying deodorant on excreta! Danger looms on the horizon. It gets palpable in exponential proportion by the day.
The parallax inevitably shall snap, sooner than later. The Debacle can be likened to two trains on opposite directions heading for a collision for unnecessary humanly crafted hurdles and tensions rising from ethnoreligious and political sentiments that vary amongst the two trains.
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The Purported and suddenly suspended Ruga program proposed by the Muhamadu Buhari led administration is opening up many can of worms on how deeply divided we are and unarguably a polarized society we depict.
Ruga is a Fulani word for a temporal settlement for transit herders who settle temporarily and serves as a shelter when they return from normal nomadic adventure and mostly the women stay there to make dairy products to sell out to neighbouring villages and cities.
The northern region has and still witnesses a lot of conflict between herders and farmers as a result of climate change, overgrazing, overexploitation, expansion, ethnic supremacy, political domination, Religious linings, blockage of cattle routes, amongst others.
The establishment of Ruga settlement by federal Government has generated heats with opponents/antagonist of the program citing ethnic favouritism as the president is Fulani and the word Ruga is a Fulfulde word, thereby striking fear amongst other ethnic groups, while the proponents/protagonist of the program sees it as a welcome development to arrest the ever-spreading conflict amongst the aforementioned.
Advantages of Ruga Settlement Program
The livestock industry is a multi-billion dollars industry if over 20 million cows in Nigeria are fully utilized as in other developed nations.
The industry will provide millions of jobs to tackle the challenge of unemployment to our ever-growing population.
It will provide revenue to the government in foreign exchange through direct exports and herders will pay taxes to the government and pay for the registration of their diary firms.
Dairy products such as milk, meat, hides and skin will boost the economy and lower our poverty index rate and improve GDP per capita.
New breeds of cows do make 20-30 litres of milk daily so out of the over 20 million cows, let me assume 11 million are females which have attained maturation stage and this will give us a staggering amount of milk per day.
Reduction rate in violent conflict and improvement in farm produce: farming activities have drastically reduced due to the conflict between herders and farmers. As such, proponents of the Ruga see this as a viable and long term solution to the conflict, to the good of both parties and the nation in general.
Disadvantages of Ruga settlement
The Ruga settlement also has its disadvantages as listed below
Land tenure system: The Ruga settlement will restrict movement and as such, some classes of grass will elude the cows especially the north which has different vegetation, soil and topography of which will alter breed, sizes, reproduction and other critical aspects of the population.
There is no mutual and cohesive coexistence amongst ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.
Time and database: The program is a long term program that needs a short term and immediate solution because of the conflict and ever spread of violence which has recorded a lot of fatalities.
Controversies and Bane of Contention
Cattle breeding is a private practice and should be treated as one as we are running a capitalist economic system not socialism or communism and the government has no business in building settlements for herders, as it will be tantamount to favouring a tribe over other enterprising tribes spread across the country too.
The government has intervened in cash crop production through fertilizer subsidy, provision of seedlings and mechanised farming tools to farmers, loans with low-interest rate amongst others, so, why not the herders? Why not the livestock industry?
If the government builds settlements for herders they must also build machine spare parts sellers across the federation as no tribe is more Nigerian than the other.
Not all Fulanis are herders and not all herders are Fulanis and the assertions that the government is trying to uplift one tribe over the other is false and completely out of place.
The government must provide lands for dog, pigs and chicken poultry farmers as well as livestock industry is beyond cattle rearing.
The government has built and is still building infrastructure across the country from roads, markets, schools, hospitals, airports etc all for the benefits of its citizenry who also use it for personal businesses as well, why are we against the herder benefiting from the government? The herder too is a Nigerian like any other.
Going by the controversies, I believed that both parties have strong and genuine arguments as mentioned above.
Possible solutions
The government must first and foremost prioritise humans over cattle as both the farmer and herder are humans and many times the victims of the violence are neither herders nor farmers and at times both patties record scores of loss and mortality.
Industrialization is a key to development as Steel is the hub of industrialization and revitalization of Ajaokutu steel is a must.
There must be a consensus via compromise as the government must bring all stakeholders on board to draft a policy framework that will provide solutions to arrest further tensions.
States who have indicated interest should be supported and States who have declined should be respected and not compelled to do otherwise.
Mr Kushi Libi Isaac writes via [email protected]
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