President Bola Tinubu’s promise to establish a Federal Ministry of Livestock Development comes with several question marks and for cogent reasons. This will be the 49th Ministry in his cabinet.

The president succumbed to pressures by the herdsmen interest groups, particularly the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN, which demanded for a separate ministry for their occupational/business group. Under the current arrangement, livestock is part of the Technical and Service Departments of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.

With the yielding to pressure by the president, the herders, whose armed militias are part of the insecurity terrorising Nigerians, will be the first ethnic-rooted occupational group to earn a specially dedicated Federal Ministry. They are bound to believe they grabbed it by force of arms or terror.

We do not believe the problems that herdsmen face or the headache they constitute to Nigerians will be solved by merely elevating a department in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to a whole ministry. It could well be just an avenue to absorb elements of the herdsmen interest group into airconditioned offices of the Federal Government.

That is far from addressing the issues which have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The herders believe they have the right to claim ownership of the areas they have traditionally been allowed to graze their animals by indigenous communities.

The reign of terror they have unleashed on farming communities is their response to rejection of this assumption by the landowners. They defy any attempt by the various state governments to subject their activities, like other businesses, to the law. Will the creation of a separate ministry persuade them to pursue their occupation peacefully and lawfully, or will it embolden them to kill more people?

We recognise the fact that the pastoralist community faces peculiar experiences which were foisted upon them by their traditional system of nomadism. The real question is: how do we settle them into ranches without depriving farming communities and other landowners of their ancestral patrimonies?

Former President Muhammadu Buhari tried to solve this problem through the raw exercise of the Federal might: creation of RUGA settlements all over the country; the National Livestock Transformation Plan, NLPT; confiscation of water resources; and others, which did not work because they were firmly resisted by landowners.

We must bear in mind that livestock farming is not a tribal occupation. Government policies should make it attractive for all who wish to invest. All livestock must be ranched on properties owned, bought or rented by the livestock owners. All non-Nigerian herdsmen should be expelled, while indigenous herders must obey the laws of states in which they find themselves. Livestock policy should never be a cover for ethnic land-grabbing.

It Is a call for endless violence.

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