The lie called National Livestock Transformation Plan (Open letter to Gov. Ortom)

Your Excellency Sir,
I apologize for having to use a public medium sir, nevertheless, the assumption that all open letters to leaders by citizens are in bad faith is however not entirely true. In this case it is done in absolutely good faith, with the utmost respects and highest esteem, only that the enormity of this matter is so serious and urgent, one that touches on the very core of the survival of the people God has today chosen you to lead that further delay by a ‘nobody’ like me in trying to get an appointment which must be through your Aides who may not find me worthy enough to usher into His excellence’s presence may prove inimical.

Like the majority of the Benue citizenry, I applaud your stance on the carefully orchestrated genocide on farmers must inappropriately christened the farmers/herders clash.

Indeed not just Benue, but the entire nation rose unanimously in salute to your courage in calling off the bluff of the aggressors. Perhaps, your assenting to the Anti-open grazing bill initiated by the Movement Against Fulani Occupation (MAFO) may have unwittingly been the master-stroke that has blown the lid off the sinister agenda called the ‘farmer/herders clash’.

Your Excellency sir, on June 26th, 2016, I was opportune to attend a peace parley organized by Chief Terkura Suswam between the Tiv and Fulani herdsmen at Anyiin in Logo local government area. Before then Chief Suswam had earlier organized a football match between the two sides aimed at seeking for peace. In the Anyiin meeting attended by the then Benue state commissioner of police, your security adviser and traditional rulers, the Fulani herdsmen grievance as explained by their spokesmen was cattle rustling.

I had some few years earlier followed Governor Gabriel Torwua Suswam together with other journalists to Lafia at least on two occasions to seek for ways to put an end to the intractable farmers/herders clash’. The grievance was once again, as articulated by the fulanis; cattle rustling.

In October, 2016, I was invited by Wantaregh Paul Unongu to accompany him to the 10th year anniversary of the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III. The elder statesman seized the opportunity and dramatically sought to intercede in the unending ‘farmer/herders clash’. He went cultural. He presented two Tiv (bua Tiv) cows to the Sultan who is the leader and spiritual head of the Fulanis worldwide. According to Elder Unongo, this was a symbolic gesture of penance for any cattle the Tiv people may have ever owed the Fulani. In his speech the Sultan admonished the Tiv people, albeit jokingly, to stop stealing the Fulani people’s cows.

The Agatu massacre is considered a national tragedy. Hundreds of people were gruesomely killed in one day in the most horrifying manner that would appall even the most hardened sadist. The leadership of the Miyitti Allah were to come out a few days later to announce to a shocked and perplexed nation that the massacre was indeed carried out by their people the Fulani herdsmen as a revenge for cattle rustling and in retaliaton for the killing of a Fulani man in Agatu.

Your Excellency sir, your assent to the Anti-open grazing bill was a master stroke that would have solved the two edged problem, if that were indeed the problem. Farmers would not need to complain about cattle eating their farms and the cattle would not roam about for them to be rustled.

This peace effort was and is still being vehemently resisted by the Fulani. They are just not impressed that it would curtail bloodletting and safeguard their cattle. Nor do they give a hoot that it is the best practice the world over and in tandem with modernity.

And so for the first time, with no more excuse of rustled cattle, on January 18th 2018, the herdsmen militia struck in Guma and Logo local government areas and massacred 73 people to the consternation of the rest of the country and the international community. That attack and many others after that in our hinterlands by a militia wielding sophisticated arms and permanently lurking on the fringes of our villages have confined our people to internally displaced peoples (IDPs) camps on their own land.

I am sorry sir, if I have taken long to arrive at my point considering His Excellences’ tight schedule. The major point I am trying to make is this: that the so called grievance of cattle rustling advanced by herdsmen as an excuse for uninhibited pogroms on our people were but well thought out excuses for the execution of the ultimate grand plan.

And what is that grand plan?

To create a space for themselves and their kin by depopulating the land as much as possible and in the process create fear and despair. With sufficient terror struck in the hearts of native inhabitants of ancestral lands through horrible mutilations and painful deaths, through despair caused by hunger and deliberate starvation by keeping our people perpetually in IDPs Camps, submission to the Fulani agenda would become the only succor and we would readily accede to the offer exactly like we are unfortunately doing now with the Trojan horse called the National Livestock Transformation Plan.

We have co-existed with the fulanis for centuries. It was therefore not a secret that the aggressors are aliens even before their actual leaders started opening up. Just after the January 1st, 2018 Benue massacre, against the groundswell of national outcry and condemnation, Prof Umar Labdo Mohammad of the faculty of Humanities, North west university Kano was quoted in the January 18th, 2018 publication of the Daily post as saying that “Benue state belongs to the Fulani people by right of conquest… so no one has the right to expel the Fulani from Benue under any guise”.

Two years earlier, one of the core Fulani leaders and former Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano, Prof Ango Abdullahi made it very clear that “if for any reason somebody in one section of this country will deny him (the Fulani herdsman) access, then we will have to take measures to respond to that” (Pulse January 16th 2016).

But the most damning exposition is from the serving Governor of Bauchi state Alhaji Bala Muhammed who has minced no words in telling it as it is. In a piece in The Punch newspaper of Monday 16th September, 2019 captioned; “Fulani herdsmen from Chad, Niger to benefit from FG’s livestock plan’, read as follows:
‘Fulani herdsmen from Chad, Niger and other neighbouring countries will benefit from the National Livestock Transformation Plan, the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, has said.

Mohammed, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Monday, said since Fulani herdsmen are nomadic, it would be inappropriate to deprive them from benefitting from the livestock plan just because they are not from Nigeria. The initiative will be 80 per cent funded by the Federal Government while the states would provide 20 per cent counterpart funding and the grazing land.

The governor, whose state is among those that will be part of the initiative, said Fulani exist in many countries across Africa and share a brotherhood which transcends boundaries. When asked how the government would ensure that only Nigerians benefit from the livestock plan, Mohammed said, “I think there is a lot of mistrust and misconception as regards the Fulani man. The Fulani man is a global or African person. He moves from The Gambia to Senegal and his nationality is Fulani.
“As a person I may have my relations in Cameroon but they are also Fulani. I am a Fulani man from my maternal side, we will just have to take this as our own heritage, something that is African. So we cannot just close our borders and say the Fulani man is just a Nigerian.

“In most cases, the crisis is precipitated by those outside Nigeria. When there is a reprisal, it is not the Fulani man within Nigeria that causes it. It is that culture of getting revenge which is embedded in the traditional Fulani man that attracts reprisal.” When asked if it was right to allow foreigners to benefit from Nigerian taxpayers’ money, the governor said it was proper. Mohammed said “We are already accommodating them. Do you delineate and really know who is not a Nigerian Fulani man?
“They are all Nigerians because their identity, their citizenship is Nigerian even though they have relatives from all over the world. So, presumably they are Nigerians because they move all over and have relations all over. That is why our population in Nigeria is fluid.”

When asked if there would be any form of documentation for the Fulani herdsmen coming into Nigeria from other countries, the governor said, “Yes. This will give Nigeria the opportunity of having proper documentation and knowing the demography because the Fulani man settles anywhere he can feed his cattle.”

The livestock plan which is being championed by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo seeks to put herdsmen and their livestock in designated colonies which will give them the opportunity of exploiting the livestock value chain. While many northern states have embraced it, their southern counterparts have rejected it.”

Sir, the people of the state like my humble self may not know the high level behind-the-scene diplomacy that may have gone into Benue being among the 7 pilot states for the implementation of the NLTP. Ede Ogaba Ede, Press Secretary to the Deputy Governor Chief Benson Abounu who represented you at the meeting of the Northern Governor’s Forum however, explained “that the plan has the capacity to ensure resettling and addressing the dislocated populations in the key conflict zones”.

The press release further read: “speaking to newsmen after the meeting, Benue state Governor Dr. Samuel Ortom who was represented by his deputy governor Engr. Benson Abounu said the programme would be acceptable to the state as long as it conforms to the state anti-open grazing law which provides for the establishment of ranches and livestock administration, regulation and control”.

Your own Chief Press Secretary Terver Akase speaking on the Radio Nigeria Harvest FM Makurdi interactive programme “Nigeria in Perspective” further attempted to justify the state governments’ acceptance of NLTP. According to Akase, “where the NLTP conflicts with provisions of the states ranching law, the law will take pre-eminence over the plan”.
Now, the question is, what is exactly the difference between NLTP and Ruga which we had strongly and vehemently resisted apart from the change of name or garbing it in other terminologies?

Just like Ruga, the NLTP is going to be financed (80%) by the federal government. Just like Ruga, the plan is majorly about cattle. Specifically Fulani cattle. The modification for ‘settlement of dislocated population’, a polite name for our IDP’s is a shamefaced after thought as a fall out of the criticism against Ruga. Just like Ruga, the ultimate aim is to spread the fulanis from around Africa, as has been confirmed by the Bauchi state Governor across the country beginning from the north.

And it is not lost on us sir, that the 7 pilot states’ are among the most affected by the contrived Fulani crisis. After them, the rest will prove easier.

Now sir, whether they ‘conform to our anti-open grazing law’ or whether ‘the law will take pre-eminence’ or however it is phrased and re-phrased; the indisputable fact remains that the Fulanis are going to be settled sweetly on our land as indigenes forever, with our own consent. Tomorrow, the law would be on their side in the plan which is obviously long term. And from experience, as long as it is the very same Fulani genes that we know, and which history has proven over and over again, there is bound to be crisis.

Even though, with an overwhelming majority, Hausa land is ruled by the minority Fulani. Just like the Otse Etulo and the traditional ruler of Abinsi who are members of the Benue state traditional council but necessarily carryout the final rite of installment at the Aku Uka’s palace in Wukari, our NLTP guests-turned-indigenes ultimate allegiance would be to the caliphate after their legitimate foothold is assured. Furthermore, our would be follow NLTP indigenes have been responsible for the death (and they characteristically make sure it is a painful one) of our loved ones, many of our people are still in the IDP camps and the same federal government now so keen on Ruga and NLTP has exhibited total indifference. Our people are at the moment very embittered against the herdsmen and the federal government that has failed to protect them or even allow them to defend themselves. Can these passions be readily assuaged for them to ever co-exist peacefully again?

But aside all the above, beginning from the cattle rustling deceit in which they hid behind to orchestrate the most heartrending and blood cuddling atrocity on fellow humans, the sly Fulanis have betrayed a trust in their eventual intentions and agenda no matter how well it is re-christened and re-presented. Almost all efforts at peace were initiated by our elders and leaders while all the aggression was initiated by them. Lets face the painful truth and call the NLTP what it is. It is an offer for us to stop being killed by the fulanis-relinguish your land in exchange for peace, that is the entire import of the program.

Your Excellency sir, Benue should be wary of the NLTP. It is a Greek gift. It is a lie. The acceptance of the NLTP in the reality of our current circumstances may be a bit too hasty and might prove fatal in the long run.

In the inner recesses of my heart, I know just what you are up against. A highly organized and vicious foe with scant regard for human life in pursuit of an all consuming agenda. May God continue to protect and guide you in the discharge of your duties to fatherland.

Your faithfully,

Yanor Nyigbem Kukwa
BA (Hons), MA (Unilag), PhD (UniAbuja, in view)
08062501220