The National Grazing Reserve Bill: The Greatest Evil Of All

By Femi Fani-Kayode

On April 18th 2016, Mr. Okonkwo Afamefuna wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“I decided to read a copy of the National Grazing Reserve Bill and I was surprised at what I saw. The Bill creates a council to be chaired by a chairman to be appointed by the president. The council shall have the power to take your land anywhere the land is located in the country and then pay you compensation. Your land, when taken, shall be assigned to herdsmen who shall use your land for grazing purposes. They shall bring cows to the land and you shall lose the land permanently to those Fulani cattlemen”. This is the Sudan downloading right here in Nigeria.”

*Fani-Kayode 

On April 18th, Mr. Gabriel Ogbonnaya wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“I decided to read a copy of the National Grazing Reserve Bill and I was surprised at what I saw. The Bill creates a commission to be chaired by a Chairman to be appointed by the president, to be confirmed by the senate. The commission shall have the power to take your land anywhere the land is located in the country and then pay you compensation. Your land, when taken, shall be assigned to herdsmen who shall use your land for grazing purposes. They shall bring cows to the land and you shall lose the land permanently to those cattlemen. If you feel that the commission was not right to take your land, you can go to court but before you go to court, you must first of all notify the federal attorney general of your intention to sue the commission. Apart from notifying, you must get the consent and authority of the federal attorney general before you can sue. So that means that if the attorney general refuses to give his consent to the suit, you have lost your land forever to the herdsmen. And this law, when passed, shall apply to the whole country so it means that your land in the village or anywhere is not safe. The National Grazing Reserve Commission would have the power to take away your land from you anytime they want and pay you whatever they want as compensation (even when you don’t want to sell, and remember that for you to get compensation, you must have documents showing or proving ownership). So I think that we all in the South-West, South-South and South-East must rise up and reject this Bill. We must do all things to force our national Assembly members from passing that Bill into law. That Bill is a deliberate attempt to take our lands and hand the land over to the Fulani cattlemen since it is only the Fulanis that rear cattle in Nigeria. That law, when passed, shall fulfill the directive of Uthman Dan Fodio and other northern leaders to take over other parts of Nigeria. I implore you to use all available means to implore your senator and Reps not to pass that law. That law will destroy Nigeria. All over the world, ranches are established and used to rear cattle. The farmers buy land and put their cattle there. There is no country where the land of the citizens are compulsorily acquired and given to others.

This is evil, and designed to favour the Fulanis, the stock the president comes from. We must resist the passage of that Bill into law to save Nigeria, and to protect our future generations.” This is Yugoslavia and Rwanda unfolding right here in Nigeria.

On April 18th 2016, Mr. Duru Collins wrote the following on his Facebook wall:

“This National Grazing Reserve Bill if passed into law will just mark the beginning of apartheid in our country. When the government of Zimbabwe collected land from the white people who naturalised there the whole world worked against President Robert Mugabe. Sanctions were stiffened against his regime even though the whites in Zimbabwe were not African by origin. In our country today there are people that are not Nigerians by origin and these people are making laws to take over our inheritance. This nation will burn once this law is passed.” This is Lebanon and Zimbabwe downloading right here in Nigeria.” 

Their latest attempt is the introduction and proposal of what is known as the National Grazing Reserve Bill which will give the Fulani herdsmen the right to claim other peoples land all over the country and which will empower them by law to create their own settlements and communities in the territory of others.

Worse still under that law the government will be compelled to fund those settlements and put all that they need in terms of infrastructure in place for them. That is why our Minister of Agriculture is now talking about importing Brazilian grass for the Fulani herdsmen and their cattle.

This subtle and exceptionally brilliant attempt to infiltrate and conquer by guile and assimilation reminds me of the frightful laws that were put in place in the old wild western prairies of 19th century America.

Those laws gave the white settlers rights over the lands of the indigenous Red Indians and saw the Indians themselves subjected to genocide and ethnic cleansing and herded into barren reservations that were not fit for human habitation.

It was in this way that the “wild west” was conquered and the once proud and noble war-like Indian tribes of the western prairies were subjugated and subdued.

Sadly our legislators in the National Assembly from the South and the Middle Belt simply do not appreciate and cannot comprehend the serious implications of what they are doing by supporting this evil legislation and neither will the consequences of their naivety and folly be suffered by their constituents until it is far too late.

If that law is ever passed and implemented, two years from that time we will regret it deeply as a nation because it will result in nothing but conflict, chaos and strife between the Fulani herdsmen and settlers on the one hand and the local indigenous population on the other.

The tragedy that unfolded in Jos, Plateau State between the indigenous Christian Beroms and the settler Muslim Fulani for many years is a graphic example of what will be replicated all over the south and the Middle Belt between the Fulani and the various local indigenous populations if that law is ever passed and implemented.

As a matter of fact it will be far worse than anything that Jos ever saw. The National Grazing Reserve Bill will not result in enhancing unity and peace but instead it will result in division, bloodshed, carnage and chaos”.

My conclusion? This is Iraq, Syria and Libya unfolding right here in Nigeria.

When you create a conflict which has its roots in religion, ethnicity, land rights, the attempt to marginalise, dominate, subjugate and conquer others and the quest for liberation and freedom from slavery and bondage all mixed into one, you are toying with a conflagration that will not only be simply horrendous and that will not only affect the whole of Africa but will also last for the next fifty years.

Let me be clear: the greatest evil that we are confronted with in Nigeria today is the National Grazing Reserve Bill. It is more evil than anything that we have ever seen before. It is more insidious and dangerous than anything that we can possibly imagine.

It will do more harm to us than Boko Haram and the Nigerian civil war put together and it will result in open war and the total disintegration of Nigeria. I am speaking prophetically and I am saying this under the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We must stop this cantankerous and divisive Bill from seeing the light of the day and being made into law. There are some things that are bigger, greater and more important than partisan politics and this is one of them.

We must all stand together regardless of our political affiliation and stop this evil Trojan horse from being smuggled into our ranks by those that seek to subjugate and conquer us. We must resist those that seek to strip us of our self-respect, self-worth, liberty and dignity.

We must stand up against those that seek to destroy us and rob us of our faith and our ancestral lands. We must say ‘’never’’ to those that seek to belittle and enslave us and that are hell bent on reducing us to nothing even within our own shores.

May God help our people and our country and may He deliver us from evil.

*Mr.  Fani-Kayode was Nigeria’s Aviation Minister