A governor’s problem solving approach and commissioner’s ranching definition

What started as rumour on social media about the intention of the state government to implement the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) scheme in some parts of the state soon morphed into a spectrous truth when the state Commissioner for Information, Mr. Aka Eze Aka, issued a press statement with the rather cynical headline, ‘RUGA is not ranching’, in which he attempted to argue that while the state government was not attempting to implement the RUGA programme in the state, it was working towards creating ranches in a bid to prevent the clashes between farmers and Fulani herdsmen.

Although previous discussions in the national media space have put to rest this attempt by the commissioner to separate ranching from RUGA, I will still speak on this later in this article, but what is more important for me in the early portions of this intervention is to establish the proven strategy of the state government to isolate the people of Nsukka zone and put them to work each time they want to insult the sensibilities of the people. During the campaigns, and of course during the accompanying litigations, before the Supreme Court flung Nigerian Laws and commonsense under the bus to validate this government, there was this other person whose brief appeared to attack and insult the people of the zone.

Aka appears to have stepped up the game from where this other character stopped. Agreed that he is the Commissioner for Information with an apparent omnibus remit, an issue such as the one he appears to have been given the exclusive engagement prerogatives, should have the voice and imprimatur of the Commissioner for Agriculture, whose primary brief it is to provide the composite technical and even operational details while his Information counterpart gives an overview as would enable communication.

But the Agric Commissioner has to be kept away from the hauls and brickbat while an internal conflagration ignited within the kindred consumes what remains of any filial threads. Only the uninitiated would doubt the reason the Information Commissioner was thrown into the ring: if any person feels his or her sensibilities have been pricked, let the fight and bad blood be between people of the same stock

From what I have seen of the DNA of the head of this government so far, it is not as if Governor Peter Mbah cares a moped’s honk about what anybody thinks about how he runs the government the Nigerian courts have gifted him. But it looks like it gives him a queer kind of entertainment setting a people, especially the people of Nsukka zone, against themselves and propping one of their own to poke peppered fingers into their collective eyes.

You can see this in every drop of ink in the press statement by the commissioner. He did not miss the chance to call his people names, to the great entertainment of his principal. He called the grieving survivors of the Nimbo and Eha Amufu killings fabulists and political manipulators. He described the poor wives of Nimbo farmers who dared to protest the plan to give their land to those who killed their husbands, siblings, and children in 2016, as making mountains of molehills.

As far as he was concerned, the dastardly slaughter of over 120 people in Eha Amufu and scores of others in Uzo Uwani are mere molehills as compared to the high crime of protestations against what the people have rightfully described as RUGA in disguise.

I am convinced these words were carefully chosen because of the knowledge that they would provide great entertainment for the man in blue suits presiding at the Lion Building.

The commissioner, in living in denial, tried to convince himself, and perhaps provide more entertainment for his principal, created a rather illiterate headline, ‘Ranch is not RUGA’ before launching into his annoyingly empty drivel that I am sure may only entertain those he works for, but certainly cannot convince them.

Ranch is not RUGA!!! How brilliant! But yes! Ranch cannot be RUGA, the same way that beef is not derived from cow and chicken, not from poultry.

To educate my brother, the commissioner, I undertook a rudimentary re-reading of the RUGA policy that has, as we speak, been suspended by the Federal Government because of the national angst that trailed its announcement, and the conceptual definition should be enough to make the Commissioner realise how intentionally duplicitous his press statement was.

RUGA, and I will share verbatim what I got from Wikipedia and a few other wikis that discussed the issue online, was “a Nigerian policy intended to reduce herder–farmer conflict. Introduced by the Buhari Muhammad Presidency, it is aimed at resolving the conflict between nomadic Fulani herdsmen and sedentary farmers. The policy, which is currently suspended, would ‘create reserved communities where herders will live, grow and tend their cattle, produce milk and undertake other activities associated with the cattle business without having to move around in search of grazing land for their cows”.

I know my friend, the commissioner will read this, and I will recommend, like they do of prescription drugs, that he should read this preceding paragraph very slowly, over and again.

If the ingredients Eze described in his vanquished Ranching scheme were not as exactly prescribed in the now-suspended RUGA programme, then water can no longer be classified as a liquid. Perhaps what is missing in the government’s botched RUGA vision but which is subtly incorporated in the Enugu ranching template is the now notorious taxation pipeline.

The commissioner was clever in sneaking this into his press statement, perhaps out of fear that even those for whose benefit the ranch-RUGA project was being fashioned, might take flight for fear of being taxed out of their ranching business. Aka did not fail to mention in the fifth paragraph of his press statement that “all cattle movement transported from the northern part of the country stops at the ranch for proper inspection and revenue build-up”.

Yes, it had to be all about the money. Government wants to tax even the ranchers, and as long as the garroted cows keep gushing money, it wouldn’t matter how many people are being displaced and how many lives are put in further danger with the habouring of sworn enemies of the people right in their midst.

I doubt if the commissioner was concerned about logic when he was issuing his press statement. Otherwise, how could he say that government was building ranches to prevent herder-farmer clashes, and then also say trucks conveying cattle from the north would have to stop at the ranch for inspection? Is he saying that the ranches would not only serve as breeding grounds for cattle but also trading spots for northerners?

Has he also said, even before we put the question to him, that the ranches so planned by the government, would be for only northerners? I am asking this question because I am aware that there are several people from my place of origin who breed cattle. Some of them are members of my extended family. It is a business they inherited from their father. Is Aka saying that they would, or would not be doing business in the proposed ranches if God allows it to come to fruition?

It would be nice for Mbah to carry on his mission in the state with the civilized approaches that bypasses the permanently fixed rictus on his lips to take the form of his nice blue suits, and one of the ways to demonstrate this would be to put his ranching policy through the tests of both the law and the test of conscience. I am suggesting this because I am aware that while the state government, by law, can exercise powers over land in all parts of the state, such exercise of powers has to be guided and governed by what is termed, “overriding public interest.

Thankfully, Mbah is a lawyer, and understand the immediate and long-term legal implication of grabbing peoples land and allocating it to another interest that is not public.

Lastly, I am also curious that this ‘laudable’ ranching scheme of the state government is conveniently being implemented only in the old Nsukka Senatorial zone? Is it that the fodder in Nsukka, Igbo Etiti, Igbo Eze North, Igbo Eze South, Udenu, Isi Uzo and Uzo Uwani are so especially nutritious they would make for fattened cows and abundant dairy?

I am aware that in July 2016, the people of Ugbawka in Nkanu East Local Government Area, complained of what they described as the “overbearing activities of Fulani Herders”. I also know that earlier in April of the same year, same herders reportedly killed some people in Imama Community in the same Ugbawka. There have been various fatal clashes between herders and community people in Nkanu East, Nkanu West, Aninri, Awgu, Udi and Ezeagu Local Government Areas. It is therefore hard to understand why, according to reports, the three areas that the Enugu State Government plans to site its ranches have to be located in the Nsukka Cultural Zone.

People have speculated it is the governor’s way to further inflict punishment on the people for not voting for him during the last election. Those who hold this view will point their fingers to the sparse development projects that have been touted by the government and how the old Nsukka zone was insulated. Perhaps the government in its development wisdom, has seen that Nsukka people would develop better when they are buffeted by marauding herders, many of whom are not even Nigerians for all we know.

But even then, I know that the Uzo Uwani people voted massively for him. So why put them through such ill treatment? During his campaigns for the governorship seat he has now been made to occupy, Governor Mbah, while stomping Uzo Uwani, had promised to establish a university of agriculture in the area to, as he said on the day, help with all the agricultural research that would make the state more prosperous.

This statement was greeted with rapturous thunderous applause from hopeful community people who in their innocecse, did not suspect that what Mbah had in mind was the establishment of a cattle settlement to be exclusively populated by a set of people that have taken killing their hosts as their favourite sport.

I know that the Commissioner for Information will return to explain to us a bit more about the issues raised here. As I said from the beginning, there is this cheeky entertainment someone derives from setting Nsukka people to insult the sensibilities of Nsukka people. And this reminds me of how my attempted rendition was executed last August.

When the policemen, who claimed they were sent by a senior government official were engaging me in a conversation, I noticed that they spoke clear Nsukka dialect of the Igbo Language. I was later to find out that the person who led the team of about seven policemen who came for me was from Uhunowere in Igbo Eze South Local Government Area of Enugu North zone.

So just like Aka is doing, now, the business of setting Nsukka people to undo their fellow Nsukka people did not start today. And when the planned deprivation of our lands begins to yield the fruits of grief and gnashing of teeth tomorrow, the explanation would be:

Shebi their brother dey for government when e happen and na im use im mouth announce and defend am sef?

I pray and hope somebody sees reason to not make either us or our children wake up to such a day!