By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
The Miyetti Allah has gone to town. And they are crying their eyes out. And their tears are over the decision of the governors of the Southeast not to let one inch of their scarce land get traded for ranching. In all, one salutes the Miyetti Allah guys. Their gambit tells a piece. It tells that democracy is working. See, http://sunnewsonline.com/ranching-miyetti-allah-expresses-shock-south-east-govs-decision/
Anyway, while one has to appreciate their choice to exercise their democratic right of free speech, certain issues need to be clarified for them. And that is assuming that the Miyetti Allah dudes are not in the know already.
- Ranching corrals vast acreages of lands. And when the matter comes to land and land endowment, the south east is obviously out of contention. Simply put the south east does not have sufficient land for itself. Very easily the south east suffers the highest population density of any Nigerian region. This fact has implications. The first is that land has thus become, by default and choice, a strategic resource to southeasterners. Land in the southeast thus has to be rationed according to hierarchy of needs and efficiency of deployment.
- On hierarchy of needs it is obvious that the southeast has no lands and can spare no lands at all for ranching. Even land for ordinary farming is steadily being eroded by population pressures and the consequential need for housing. Nigerian population is projected to mark its 300 millionth person soon. And the southeast like the rest of Nigeria is in for the demographic trap and really worse off. That is to say in the next 10 years or so there will be a crisis of land allocations in the south east. And that is without ranches being in the mix. To add ranches to it is to detonate the population density bomb the southeast.
- The implication is that if the southeast gives out land as ranches now, in the next 30 years the southeasterners will be forced to live in the air or flee their region so that cows and cattle can be husbanded or ranched.
- Thus the efficiency of use and deployment of land demand and indicate that southeastern farmers should actually be migrating to other zones. That is to say in the next 20 years farmers of southeast origin may be pressured to be leasing farming spaces from land rich states. Perhaps what the Lagos and Kebbi states are doing with rice, southeastern farming community may be doing with states who may wish to oblige them. As a reminder, Lagos throws in money and Kebbi throws in land and harvests of rice are shared between the land owner and financier. But that it is well to recall is strictly at state to state, not Federal government to state deal. The point is important.
- Thus we expect Igbo cow and cattle rangers to go cap in hand to land rich states and as individual business persons lease land for ranching and animal husbandry. And that is if the concerned states so approve. Living together is not by fire, is not by force.
- Therefore logic demands that Miyetti Allah should exclude the southeast from its fantastical ambitions to acquire estates or ranches via collusive federal government or its agencies. Simply put the southeast doesn’t have land enough for its own ”domestic” use.
- Additionally the muscling in of the Federal government makes the who saga look like it is a game. Why would the Federal government be involved? And I watched Channels on 14-07-18, when an anchor put up a claim that federal government is into airports too and therefore could do ranches. According to her, corporations lease it out for use. Apparently the guests were at a loss how to respond.
- The points are as follows. Airports are a bad example to push. Airports, especially international airports are first and foremost international borders. They are not strictly business plazas. The business plaza aspects of them are incidental. This fact is underlined by the decisive presence of the full complement of security forces, including customs, immigration, etc. agencies at international airports. It is just same at land border zones.
So as keeper of national security, international airports are priority of governments. However it is also true that federal governments built the other non-international airports. But that was the aberration of stolen powers aka military rule and unitary governance. And we cannot take the banditry of dictatorships as reference points. If we did, then we are all in trouble, including the Miyetti Allah.
If Miyetti Allah canvasses the military aberration as the new normal, then it follows that they can wake up and find themselves a banned organization etc. And this without her having recourse to the law. Thus it is undemocratic to point at the ways of the military as a model of democratic behavior. It is not.
If you used the template of other democratic cultures, local airports are not owned by the federal governments. Such airports are owned by relevant cities, states or boroughs or private concerns. And it is these states etc that will determine if and how it is to build and lease it out.
In other words if there are to be cattle ranches it should be the sole prerogative of individual states, in fact local governments or groups of them to so decide. The idea of the Federal government coming to help out is to put it mildly wondrous.
Again, why must the land for ranching be spread throughout the 6 zones? Business is about location, location and location. The best location for ranches remain areas where there are land surpluses. The idea of ”fit and proper” grass is now a technical matter. If you involved the Israelis for instance, they can teach you how to farm in the desert or graze cows literally on stones. So, to be short on grass for your cows or cattle is choice not fate.
It follows that the north being a land rich zone should gobble the ranches and the billion dollar gains attached to it. And to lighten the burden of the parties in issue, the governor of Kano state has promised to give out his state land to ranchers. And he says Kano has enough land for all the cattle and cow and ranchers in Nigeria. Luckily Kano citizens are not protesting, in fact they welcome the idea and the billion dollar sweeteners attached to it. Good luck to them.
But Kano is not like the other states especially the southeastern and south-southern states. In these states both the governments and the peoples are saying no. And they insist they have better uses for their land that is so short in supply it is as scarce as gold.
Well we wish Meyitti Allah well in their future endeavors, but let them like water find the proper levels for their cattle and ranching ambitions. As for the southeast and their households, they do not need ranches. They do not have land to lease out to ranchers. In fact a southeast consortium we are advising is looking at the option of leasing land for ranches and mechanized farming in ”offshore” Cameroun. So how can the southeast give to another what they don’t have for themselves, what they have to reach out to the market to purchase?
The gospel according by the strait gates of Aso Rock
If we are to quote a ”mighty man of his God”, Pastor Tunde Bakare, “[Kemi Adeosun] went on to see someone else in the Villa and I went into a closed door meeting with PMB alone to thank him for sending a powerful delegation to my mother’s home-going celebration. This is the truth. The impression being created is as if she ran to me to speak to the President on her behalf. This impression is erroneous and false.” https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2018/07/14/bakare-i-met-buhari-for-sending-high-profile-delegation-to-my-mums-burial/
This is obviously not the truth. One doesn’t enter into seclusion, one doesn’t get about closing doors just to thank another guy. One enters in camera to whisper with his audience. And the whispering is not of course about the secret things of the most high god. Those are done in the open. We only whisper to power, to the rulers, of this present darkness, to quote the scriptures, about the lowly intrigues of this world.
The point remains that thanksgiving is a thing of joy and except it is of the ogboni, it is usually done in the open. When it happens in secret it is mafia or ogboni style rite. And it is usually for a major, but unmentioned and unmentionable mafia-style plea or favour.
Except Bakare is mixing up or missing out on his registers, he is about the slip of telling, possibly involuntary lies. He is about the business of withholding parts of whole truths. As things stand we don’t believe or disbelieve Pastor Bakare. But merely judging him by his own words, he falls short. He probably is telling fictions or not all the truth he knows. Anyway life goes on. Anyway lies go on too and in tandem. Things happen. This is Nigeria.