One of three things is likely to happen to Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Chief Audu Ogbeh’s idea of establishing cattle colonies as the final solution to the problem of farmers/herders clashes in this country. The first likelihood is that nothing will happen. Clashes between the two top agricultural occupations could still be occurring 40 years from now, when Nigeria’s population would have exceeded 400 million and there would be little space left to play football, much less graze cattle.
When the Federal Government announced last week that work on establishing cattle colonies will begin this week, I winced and thought of all the grand promises with firm target dates that government made during my lifetime, most of which were quietly abandoned when the target date passed. In 1976 for example, when government launched the Universal Free Primary Education [UPE] scheme, we were told that every Nigerian child will be in school within a few years. Last week, 41 years after UPE’s launch and 19 years after it was grandiosely renamed Universal Basic Education [UBE] by the same man who launched UPE, I read somewhere that 12 million Nigerian children are out of school.
In the 1970s, our government propounded a message that filled the airwaves, ‘Health for All by the Year 2000.’ Government agents stuck a poster on every wall promising the health care miracle. When we first heard it in 1975, the target date was so far away that we believed it would happen. Imagine our surprise on December 31, 1983 when Brigadier Sani Abacha said in his coup speech that our hospitals had become “mere consulting clinics.” By then it was still 17 years to the target date and we thought government will buckle up. For where! It is because of this record that I will not swear that we will see cattle colonies in Nigeria anytime soon.
The second possibility is that government will surprise us and within a few years, cattle colonies will be flourishing in the states that accept to have them. They could become some of the busiest and most lucrative economic establishments around. All roads could lead to the cattle colonies. Long lines of trucks discharging fodder; trailers loading up cattle meant for abattoirs; other trailers loading hides for leather factories; still other trucks loading up horns and hooves for the chemical industry; smaller vehicles discharging veterinary medicines; teams of workers dredging up water reservoirs, canals and repairing pumps and boreholes. Cattle fart a lot; chemical engineers might well install pipes and tanks to tap the gas, which could draw customers away from Brass LNG. A lot of cattle traders, security guards, revenue collectors, vets, drivers and touts will be milling around the cattle colony. If it works.
The third possibility is that the program will get off to a grand start only to be abandoned soon afterwards, either due to change of government or when a new problem crops up and the government changes its priorities. Among the many things government started and abandoned during my lifetime were building a health centre in each local government; many rural electrification projects; Kujama Earth Satellite; Lagos Metro; Ajaokuta Steel; a national standard gauge railway system contained in the Third National Development Plan of 1975-80 and the Almajiri project. Cattle colonies could join the list.
Chief Audu Ogbeh said 16 state governments have agreed to provide land to build the colonies. Twenty states have either refused to provide land or have kept mute. Under the Land Use Act the federal government can compulsorily acquire land from any state but there is no need to do so. All it has to do is to gear up and make the cattle colonies idea a smashing success. If it succeeds, Nigeria being what it is, a few years down the road the same states that spurned the offer to build cattle colonies based on emotions of the moment will turn around and allege that the federal government marginalised them in the lucrative venture. Within my lifetime I witnessed how the most eminent sons of Lagos State, including the Oba of Lagos, publicly told the Babangida regime not to create new local governments in the state, only for restructuring agitators to turn around 26 years later and cite Lagos State’s relatively few LGAs as proof of marginalisation.
If the cattle colonies idea succeeds, it would not be long before Nigerian farmers demand the setting up of farmers’ kingdoms. With the roaming cattle herds gone, their huge droppings which fertilise soils will be gone. Farmers must either buy organic fertiliser or some traders will collect dung from cattle colonies, package, transport it and sell to farmers. I became very familiar with this matter during the long school holidays in 1981 when my teacher, Professor Abdul Hamid, set me to do research work on the dung beetle. For three months I followed cattle herds up and down Sokoto, moved in as soon as they defecated, observed and collected different species of dung beetle that moved in, cut the dung into pieces, rolled it into small balls, buried the balls in the ground and then dropped an egg on each ball. The beetle was not being altruistic; the dung served as food for its young but it also contributed enormously in enriching the soil for agriculture. The beetles could be gone with the cattle; farmers must find ways to fill the void.
If the relentless march of global climate change continues, we might soon have less rain, less vegetation, more heat and less predictable weather. With the herdsmen gone, a new round of conflict could start between farmers, which the media could dub farmer-on-farmer clashes. Nigerian farmers would then demand that government sets up farmers’ kingdoms alongside the colonies. Once farmers get their kingdoms, fishermen will demand an empire all around the rivers, lakes and seacoast. By then fishermen could be clashing with farmers, whom they will accuse of siphoning away too much water for irrigation and of pouring too much chemicals into the rivers and lakes that annihilate the fish.
Meanwhile in the cities mechanics will be clamouring for mechanics’ villages complete with workshops, towing vans, gas tanks and tool boxes. Just don’t mind the grammar; my panel beater at J Allen area in Sokoto hoisted a huge sign on his workshop, “Spray, Painter and Panel Beating.” Once mechanics get their village, long distance bus and truck drivers will demand a truckers’ soviet, more lavish and more sprawling than the trailer parks that Nigeria Shippers Council is trying to build now. As soon as drivers are ensconced in their soviet, Nigerian traders will demand that government builds for them a commonwealth which will be to today’s markets what cattle colonies are to ranches.
Nigerian criminals will then demand that government carves out for them a republic, where they will exist above the law. They will collect ransom from kidnap victims’ families; break into any house they like; smuggle goods through any land, sea or air border; manufacture whatever fake drug they like; change the expiry date of any tinned food they like; forge any visa they like and traffic in any person they like through the Sahara, Mediterranean, Caspian, Namib, Atacama or Gobi deserts or the Himalayas and sell anyone they like to Libyan slave traders. Then we will have peace in Nigeria.
