A directive by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to the National Agricultural Land Development Authority to establish 108 additional federal farm estates across the country has triggered controversy over its efficacy, acceptance, and appropriateness. Paul Ikonne, the executive secretary of NALDA, laboured recently to justify the scheme, saying it would integrate youths at the community level in the entire agriculture value chain and enable the country to achieve food security. Both he and Buhari miss the point: in a vast and diverse federal polity like Nigeria, farm settlements stand a better chance of success when propelled by the sub-national governments, attract local buy-in, and are accompanied by rural infrastructure provision and basic amenities.

The project may already be dead on arrival in many states, based on the widespread deep distrust of its motives. Across the North-Central and southern states, it is perceived as another ploy to achieve the undisguised aim of settling Fulani in large numbers across the country and gifting them grazing land on the back of a federal initiative. Ikonne’s denial that it had nothing to do with Buhari’s discredited Rural Grazing Area, cattle ranches or cattle colonies and similar proposals deploying federal might and resources to acquire land and settlements for the Fulani herders, has not doused mistrust.

For the President and NALDA, the estates, to be sited in each of the 109 senatorial districts, would help achieve food security “in the shortest possible time,” create job opportunities and engage the youth. While inaugurating the pilot estate in his hometown, Daura, in July, Buhari had reiterated his commitment to ensuring food self-sufficiency and lifting 100 million Nigerians from poverty.

The programme is faulty. Farm settlements are created as stable, secure places to grow crops and raise animals, with residents sharing facilities and services. They are aimed at enhancing rural development by providing small farmers with resources and land for commercial farm operations and raising the standard of living in rural communities. No longer used in developed countries, farm settlements have been employed in emerging economies. Pioneered in Nigeria by the defunct Western Region, the strategy was adopted by the defunct Eastern and Northern regions between the late 1950s and early 1960s. Designed to overcome the problems in agriculture practice, illiteracy, poverty, and land tenure, and to introduce modern techniques and technology and move educated youths into farming, the Western Region had 36 farm settlements by 1966.

Their initial success however gave way eventually to failure after the military takeover of government with its centralising policies, and neglect. A farm settlement initiative directed from a faraway centre is doomed to failure. Instead, NALDA should ideally be a resource and research interventionist agency providing extension services, advice, grants, training, and international linkages for interested states and private operators undertaking farm estates. Encouraging the states under national agriculture programmes, the Federal Government should restrict itself to providing support, counterpart funding and grants.

The regime cannot surmount the trust deficit. As Fulani herdsmen and militants wreak havoc across the North-Central and the South, killing, destroying crops and farmland and forcibly seizing land, this regime and security agencies have given them tacit support. They have repeatedly asked the victims to “accommodate” their tormentors, made excuses for them, and pointedly failed to stop the rampage, arrest, and prosecute the perpetrators who have been acknowledged as the world’s fourth deadliest terrorist group.

In succession, Buhari has canvassed maintaining the so-called grazing routes and reserves across the country exclusively for herdsmen; cattle colonies to settle Fulani; RUGA and settlements for herdsmen under diverse failed initiatives that all require the states and individuals to surrender their land to Fulani cattlemen from Nigeria, West and Central Africa. Retrogressively, he has sent the Attorney-General of the Federation on a wild goose chase, wasting time and resources seeking to locate and “recover 368” colonial-era grazing routes that lawyers say do not legally exist.

Prodded by their people, many states will not participate. Those like Ogun and some South-East states that have reportedly provided land may yet run into opposition from the local population. Buhari should do the right thing and sell the idea to states who will decide on their choice of farming specialisations. Ikonne’s denial of the estates being a cover to settle herders is belied by his claim that it will reduce herders-farmers’ clashes. His declaration that the Kogi estates will enable NALDA to “cluster the herders, provide them with pastures and facilities that will help support their business,” supports Buhari’s obsession with using federal might to favour an ethnic nationality and a particular business. Let states that so desire, promote ranches or estates in partnership with private investors.

Another flaw is that for farm settlements to succeed there must be a provision of basic rural infrastructure and amenities that can only be provided by states and local governments. A federal overlord cannot do that effectively and this has been proved over time. McKinsey, a consultancy, found that agricultural cooperatives organised at the local levels and providing storage, finance, equipment and marketing services propelled Ethiopia’s agricultural transformation programme. The famed Israeli Kibbutz system is a community-based integrated farming, settlement and democratic initiative that preceded, and facilitated the establishment of the Jewish state. Bolivia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda also used farm settlements with varying degrees of success.

Cash-strapped, dependent on allocations from the federally shared pool, states should devise agricultural programmes as part of overall economic policies and revive or establish farm settlements to transform their states, reduce poverty and provide employment for the army of jobless youths. Farming or any other kind of agriculture should be a private business. The government may assist in what a farmer grows, where a farm is located, how products are transported and processed, how a commodity is traded, and the price the farmer might receive.

Buhari should deal fairly and sincerely with all segments of Nigerian society and detach politics and ethnicity from governance to restore cohesion in the polity.

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