Who is Senator Shehu Sani?
Shehu Sani represents Kaduna Central at the Nigerian Red Chamber. He holds a HND in Agricultural Engineering from Kaduna Polytechnic. His profile on Wikipedia says he is a “Civil Rights Activist”. That he was actively involved in the struggle against the annulment of the June 12 1993 Presidential Election, a struggle that got him “implicated in the 1995 phantom Coup” following which he was jailed for life. Shehu Sani, however, regained freedom when civil rule was restored in 1999.
Senator Shehu Sani has led several struggles to fight for the rights of the weak and to bring succor to the poor and vulnerable.
Recently, he has been a strong voice for the Fulani herdsmen who have been terrorizing rural communities who are opposed to their destructive grazing activities. While it is nobody’s business that Senator Shehu Sani has shifted from civil rights activism to nomadic grazing rights activism, his support of the cause of the wealthy cattle rearing predators and his indifference to the plight of the poor peasant farming victims does not speak well of his reputation as a civil rights activist.
Senator Shehu Sani started by saying there are good herdsmen and there bad herdsmen. He believes that the widely reported cases of rural terrorism, raping, kidnapping and destruction of crops are perpetrated by the criminal elements among the herdsmen. The Senator, however, argues that it is wrong to demonize all herdsmen on account of the crimes committed by the few among them.
While this argument is plausible, it is difficult to apply it to herdsmen because when the “bad” herdsmen sack villages and displace the inhabitants, all herdsmen (both the “good” and the “bad” ones) move in with their cattle and occupy the deserted farmlands. How can you be knowingly benefiting from the proceeds of a crime and still claim innocence of the crime?
These well coordinated attacks cannot just be blamed on few criminal elements among the herdsmen, the attacks are part of a global agenda of the herdsmen and their patrons to capture grazing lands, having lost their land to desertification.
Senator Shehu Sani says “it is not possible to restrict the movement of Fulani herdsmen” as that would amount to violation of their fundamental right to move freely. It is laughable, but pathetic, that the Senator finds it reasonable to rely on the right to freedom of movement to justify trespass and forceful occupation of territories by herdsmen. Does the constitution say citizens should move freely and occupy any property they deem fit, and that where access is denied one should use force to displace the inhabitants and install themselves as the landowners? Why is Senator Shehu Sani mischievously turning the constitution upside down? Clearly Senator Shehu Sani is one of those who are indoctrinating the herdsmen and giving them the effrontery to sack villages, occupy deserted farmlands and maintain some level of hostilities enough to permanently keep the native inhabitants too frightened to return home as landowners.
Senator Shehu Sani blames the clashes between crop farmers and herdsmen on the “the failure of government to develop a national grazing land policy whereby the Fulani will know the paths they should follow and the ones they should avoid”. He wants government to acquire and preserve grazing reserves/routes for the exclusive use of the herdsmen as a solution to the land use conflicts between crop farmers and herdsmen. I refuse to believe the Senator is enjoying these conflicts and wants them to continue indefinitely, but the fact that his suggested conditions for peace are not realizable is so much disturbing.
Which communities in the savanna and the forest zones will be willing to concede lands large enough to accommodate the teaming population of herdsmen and herds who keep trouping into the country from the drying nations of the sahel?
Besides, does the Senator think the pasture in the proposed grazing reserves will keep regenerating and will never yield to persistent grazing? Does the Senator think that the climate change disasters that have ravaged the native home base of the herdsmen, as a result of which they relocated to other parts of the country, will never hit his proposed grazing reserves?
Someone close to Senator Shehu Sani should tap him and wake him up to the reality that the grazing reserves he is clamouring for cannot sustain the only God-knows-how-many herdsmen and herds. That in no time the grazing reserves will yield to the pressure of persistent grazing and finally become as barren as desert lands. That is if government is able to acquire the grazing reserves at all.
Why is it so difficult for a well learned man like Senator Shehu Sani to understand that herdsmen cannot continue to rely on natural pasture and water sources to sustain their livestock, and that they need to start cultivating their own pasture? Even if his training as an Agricultural Engineer did not expose him to the modern system of rearing livestock in ranches, he has travelled well enough to see how this is done in other countries that are notable for animal production.
One expects the Senator to engage in exploring ways of helping his people to access modern techniques of planting pasture and managing range lands. But no. The only modern technology Senator Shehu Sani wants for his people, the herdsmen, is the one that allows them to track the movement of cattle and which will enable the herdsmen to communicate with each other and with the government as they move from place to place. What a shame!
Today, farmers in Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba states, as well as elsewhere down south, are afraid to go to farm because of the hostilities of herdsmen. As a result, rural poverty has escalated and food security is under serious threat. Yet, Senator Shehu Sani says this will continue for as long as it takes the government (that can barely provide social amenities) to provide and equip grazing reserves for the herdsmen.
Well, if Senator Shehu Sani does not care about national food security and the livelihood of crop famers, he cannot ignore the serious threats to national security that nomadic grazing presents. The Senator and his fellow patrons of herdsmen have admitted variously that violent elements have infiltrated the ranks of herdsmen. We have no way of knowing what these “bad” herdsmen are up to. It is time to subject the herdsmen to the scrutiny of the law. Even though Senator Shehu Sani argues that “the (village) hunters in possession of guns are not different from the Fulani in possession guns”, the practice whereby herdsmen live their lives outside the purview of law enforcement agents is unacceptable in this time the country is grappling with insurgency. There is no doubt that grazing routes are potential paths for the circulation of dangerous weapons undetected, and there is no doubt that the camps of the herdsmen are lawless enclaves which can be used as bases to plan and launch attacks.
It is time to legislate against nomadic grazing and encourage the herdsmen to settle down into ranches. The nation permits the continuation of the outmoded practice of nomadic grazing at her peril.
Aper Zava
Makurdi.
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