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The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), recently revealed during an interview with Arise Television that he is backing open grazing. He said he had directed the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), to produce a copy of a gazette which listed the grazing routes in all parts of the country in the First Republic. Buhari said;
“What I did was to ask him (Malami) to go and dig the gazette of the First Republic when people were obeying laws.”Meanwhile, the president may have also forgotten that a High Court judgement by Justice Adewale Thompson banned open grazing in April 1969 and thus nullified the validity of the Government gazette that Malami is trying to upset. Similarly, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono, recently announced that the Federal Capital Territory and 22 states had registered for the NLTP grazing reserves in their states. Whether this is a legally sufficient basis or not, this shows a voluntary model of adoption being run by respective states who have signed up to the plan rather than the Federal Government encroaching illegally on land that is vested in each state leadership, across Nigeria. The National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) plan was inaugurated by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as a collaborative project among the federal and state governments, farmers, pastoralists, and private investors to address the lingering farmer-herder crisis across the country. In February 2021, the Federal Government came out to announce it had mapped out 30 grazing reserves across the country for the implementation of the NLTP plan. However, does the government need to map out grazing routes before states can tap into the controversial NLTP plan? Recently, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and the Southern Governors’ Forum at different sessions banned open grazing in states in the country. The Attorney General, Abubakar, promptly appeared live on TV to condemn the move by these governors. He had only used a false analogy to try justifying the proliferation of open grazing that the governors’ action was like banning the sale of spare parts in the North. The rebuke from the Chairperson of the Southern Governors’ Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu, which followed Malami’s criticism was sharp.
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In utter rejection of such plans, states such as Ondo, Delta, Cross River, Enugu, Benue, Akwa Ibom, and Oyo have insisted that there is no existence of a gazette that marked out grazing routes for cattle across the country. The Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Ajibola Basiru, also recently weighed in to condemn the revival of grazing routes, insisting that there had never been any federal legislation on Grazing Reserves or Grazing Routes in Nigeria. Speaking as a doctoral degree holder in property law, the Osun Central Senatorial District Senator, further clarified that:
“The Grazing Reserves Laws in some states created from the former Northern Region of Nigeria are deemed to be state laws by Section 318 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). “They have been adopted from the Grazing Reserve Law of Northern Region of Nigeria (NN Law of 1965), including CAP 3 Laws of Kwara State, CAP 56 Laws of Bauchi State and CAP 55 Laws of Katsina State.”Even before the soundness of the open grazing ban is contested in courts of law, it is now clear that the presidency may be having a wrong interpretation of the old laws which governed the country until now. It now appears that the president did not confirm with his Attorney General if said grazing routes which existed in the First Republic are still legal or not. It is known that with the NLTP, the Federal Government will be providing 49 per cent funding running to about N100bn while the remaining 51 per cent funding will come from the private sector and development partners. Whatever the case may be, states that have chosen to go with the refined NLTP plan to foster better cohabitation between farmers and herdsmen have done so at their own volition, and not by the compulsion or imposition of unlawful declarations by the Federal Government. Featured Image Source: Businessday NG
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