Ayatutu Professors Reject FG’s Pilot Ranching Plan for Benue
- Demand N1 Trillion Compensation for IDPs
Our Correspondent
The Forum of Ayatutu Professors, FAP, has rejected the Federal Government’s selection of Benue State for the pilot phase of its National Ranching Policy, describing it as unconstitutional, insensitive, and a cover for land grabbing, and is demanding that the policy be suspended immediately.
In a statement issued Saturday in Makurdi and signed by the Chairman and Secretary of its Board of Trustees, Tor Joe Iorapuu and Simon Verlumun Irtwange, the body of Tiv academics said the August 11 announcement by the Minister of Livestock Development, Alh. Idi Mukhatar Maiha, which named Benue among five states and the FCT for pilot ranching, was made after consultations with “34 pastoral groups and pastoral leaders, not the indigenous people or the community host.”
The announcement, FAP said, was received by Benue citizens at home and in the diaspora with “disbelief and shock,” and has moved people from gratitude to resentment and resilience.
FAP dismissed the Federal Government’s stated reason for picking Benue: “the preponderance of herder-farmer conflict.” According to the Forum, “there is no conflict between farmers and herders in Benue State. Instead, it is a case of fully armed invaders, some coming from outside the country, that attack communities in their sleep, kill their members, destroy their farms and take over their lands.”
It said decades of attacks have left a huge population of Benue people homeless and destitute in dehumanizing Internally Displaced People camps, and accused both the Federal and State Governments of facilitating “strategies for new graves” instead of addressing the humanitarian crisis.
“The hidden architecture of this policy is to systematically write people of the targeted states and their cultures away from history. It is of land grabbing, stealing people’s land to feed the animals of the wealthy and the caliphate,” the statement read.
The Forum clarified that Benue is not opposed to ranching in principle, pointing to historical precedents including the 1953 Livestock Investigation and Breeding Centre in Raav, the Ikyogen Cattle Ranch established in Kwande between 1982 and 1983, and the 2017 Benue State Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranching Establishment Law.
What it rejects, FAP said, is a federally driven programme that violates existing laws.
The group declared the proposed pilot policy “unconstitutional, illegal, unlawful, null and void” because the Federal Government has no constitutional right to confiscate native lands and hand them to pastoralists, that a State Governor cannot lawfully acquire land to transfer to private individuals or organisations, that government policy cannot override the Land Use Act of 1978 and the Benue Anti-Open Grazing Law of 2017, and that Sections 43 and 44 of the 1999 Constitution guarantee citizens’ right to property.
FAP also noted that there are no gazetted Grazing Reserves or designated grazing routes in Benue State, and that the state government has consistently denied allocating land for Grazing Reserves, Cattle Colonies, RUGA or the National Livestock Transformation Programme.
Instead of ranching, FAP said the government’s immediate priorities should be justice and resettlement for victims.
It called for the safe return of what it described as “over 1,000,000 uprooted and displaced population” across Benue, most of them widows, orphans and dependents, and demanded “a minimum of 1 trillion Naira compensation to the victims of these terrorists across the state.”
The Forum further recommended the construction of at least 40 dams and the immediate dredging of River Benue at Makurdi and Katsina-Ala to support irrigation and food security, and said the government must “ensure the immediate and unconditional vacation of the Fulani from the swaths of land they have forcefully taken from communities in Benue.”
FAP said it has credible information of a clandestine attempt to acquire 500,000 hectares along the River Benue coastal line for the ranching plan.
The Forum commended citizens and civil society groups that have rejected the policy and called on Benue people at home and abroad to closely monitor their elected representatives, demanding that all leaders and political appointees declare their position now.
It also urged traditional institutions to remain united with their subjects, warning that decades of attacks have destroyed the future and cultural heritage of the people.
“Government and politicians must not take for granted the emotional charge around this repressive policy. The atmosphere is thick, and the sky is cloudy, dark and pregnant,” FAP stated.
It concluded that Benue people reserve the right to approach international organizations for redress and that “there are no easy victories, but this is a movement of the heart. It is a struggle against the hidden architecture of land grabbing and resettlement plan for marauders and terrorists.”
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