By Chris O. O. Biose
THE most outstanding feature of 8 years tenure of former President Muhammadu Buhari was the emergence of armed Fulani herders that engaged in maiming, killing, and driving away crop farmers with intent to occupy their victims’ land.
In November 2015, the Global Terrorism Index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, named armed Fulani herdsmen as the “fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world”, after Boko Haram, ISIS and al-Shaba. (GLOBAL TERRORISM INDEX: 2015, INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMICS AND PEACE)
A report published by Jose Luis Baran, an Independent researcher based in Brussels, Belgium, revealed that between 2017 and May 2020, armed Fulani herdsmen killed 2,539 people in 654 attacks in Nigeria. (Bayo Akinloye, Report: Fulani Herdsmen Killed 2,539 Nigerians in 654 Attacks, THISDAY online).
As far back as May 2018, Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, described the mass killings in Taraba, Benue and Plateau states as “ethnic cleansing”. He said “There’s no other word for it. Let’s not play around with the euphemisms, it’s ethnic cleansing. There’s no other definition for what has been going on here.” He asked former President Buhari to stop the killings. (Dapo Akinrefon, Gbenga Oke and Peter Duru, BENUE KILLINGS: ETHNIC CLEANSING OR JIHAD? Soyinka, Northern leaders tango, Vanguard, May 25, 2018, p 5).
Rather than deal decisively with the perpetrators of the heinous crimes as required by law, the Buhari administration mounted consistent and persistent pressure to secure land in all states of Nigeria for Fulani herdsmen. These attempts included the National Grazing Reserve Commission Bill, 2016, Cow Colony Project, National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) and RUGA Settlement Scheme, 2019.
On June 30, 2019, the Presidency announced that the Federal Government had gazetted establishment of RUGA Settlements in 36 states of the country. Ruga is Hausa word for cow settlement. The statement from the Presidency read in part:
“Ruga Settlement” that seeks to settle migrant pastoral families simply means rural settlement in which animal farmers, not just cattle herders, will be settled in an organized place with provision of necessary and adequate basic amenities such as schools, hospitals, road networks, vet clinics, markets and manufacturing entities that will process and add value to meats and animal products. Beneficiaries will include all persons in animal husbandry, not only Fulani herders.”
The justifications proposed for RUGA by the Buhari administration was a ruse because no other ethnic nationality in Nigeria engages in cattle rearing business other than the nomadic Fulani. Hence, the then Governor of Benue State, Mr. Samuel Ortom, asked to know when the programme was gazetted and demanded proof of the existence of the gazette but the Presidency did not respond.
The Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum (SMBLF) described the RUGA Scheme as “repugnant, repulsive and provocative”. The group said the initiative was to “colonize the rest of Nigeria under the guise of promoting cattle rearing”. It asked for outright cancellation of the project. (Abdullateef Aliyu, Southern, Middle Belt Leaders Reject Ruga Settlements, Daily Trust online, June 30, 2019)
The Yoruba socio-political organization, Afenifere rejected Ruga Settlements. The then National Publicity Secretary of the Organisation, late Mr. Yinka Odumakin said that the Yoruba nation would not concede an inch of its land for the programme because it is an “expansionist policy in furtherance of Fulanization project. It seeks to use the might of the FG to take over land across and hand it over to herdsmen. If the project is allowed, non-Fulani communities would experience what Hausa experienced when Fulani walked into their space and took over all the institutions.” (Dapo Akinrefon, Why S’West rejects RUGA scheme, Vanguard, July 5, 2019, p 28).
Tiv Professionals in the FCT, Abuja, warned the Federal Government that it would take legal action to prevent the Federal Government from ceding any part of its territory to the herdsmen. On its part, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) threatened to drag President Buhari to the United Nations (UN) over the issue. (Dapo Akinrefon, Johnbosco Agbakwuru, Victoria Ojeme, Joseph Erunke & Chinonso Alozie, CAN to drag Buhari to UN over RUGA policy, Vanguard online, July 1, 2019)
Speaking to Seun Okinbaloye of Channels TV on Friday, April 12, 2024, the Speaker of the Plateau State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Gabriel Dewan described continued killings in the Plateau as “ethnic cleansing” and “conspiracy against the people” of Plateau State. He revealed that 40 communities in the state had been systematically wiped out and replaced with cattle herders. As at June 2024, indigenous youth groups in Plateau State also revealed that 151 villages were occupied by armed foreign herdsmen. Many other parts of Plateau, Benue as well as several other states in Nigeria have their tales of woes inflicted on them by the same terrorist group.
About two years into the Tinubu Presidency, the most productive crop farming communities in Nigeria, Benue and Plateau states, are still ravaged by armed herders. Majority of citizens in these states cannot go to their farms while two million persons displaced from their homes are in IDP camps in the affected zones.
On July 9, 2024, President Tinubu announced that he had established a Ministry of Livestock Development which in effect, is a revival of the infamous RUGA Settlement Scheme of his predecessor in office. President Tinubu had earlier said that he would continue where his predecessor stopped but few expected this to include the most treacherous and destabilizing policy of the former President.
On the occasion of his visit to Benue State on June 18, 2025, following intensified massacre of Benue citizens by armed herders, the Tor Tiv V, James Ayatse, told President Tinubu;
“We do have grave concerns about the misinformation and misrepresentation of the security crisis in Benue State. Your Excellency, it’s not herders-farmers clashes, it’s not communal clashes, it’s not reprisal attacks or skirmishes.” It is a “calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign.” (Adetutu Sobowale, Benue killings: ‘This is genocide, not a dispute’, Tor Tiv tells Tinubu, PUNCH online, June 18, 2025)
President Tinubu did one good thing on that occasion. He ordered the army and Police to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators of the mass killings. He also directed the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the Department of State Services (DSS) to gather actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks. (Hope Abah, Benue Killings: Arrest Perpetrators, Tinubu Orders Security Chiefs, Daily Trust online, June 19, 2025)
Surprisingly however, the President also asked the Governor of Benue State, Hyacinth Alia, to provide land in the state for ranching. (Johnbosco Agbakwuru, Benue Bloodletting: Tinubu tells Gov Alia to allocate land for ranching, Vanguard online, June 18, 2025). The relevant question that arises from President Tinubu’s directive is: ranching by who and on whose land? By what authority was the President making the request?
Any request to the Benue State Governor by President Tinubu to provide land for ranching in the circumstances, which may be construed as a directive, is ultra vires the powers of the President because it negates the letter, spirit and concept of federalism on which the Nigerian state is founded. It underscores the urgency of political restructuring to redefine Nigerian federalism.
Ranching is a private business and it is puzzling that the Tinubu administration desires to spend public funds on it. Benue State is predominantly Christian. The people do not rear cattle, do not engage in ranching and never asked for it. Could the request therefore be for the terrorist land grabbers as described by the Tor Tiv? This is a question that needs to be answered because it baffles the citizens.
Acquisition of modern skills and construction of infrastructure to improve livestock production is absolutely laudable. The million dollar question is why the project must involve taking over ancestral land from Southern and Middle Belt states and other indigenous peoples. There must be something sinister in such plan that goes beyond livestock development which Nigerians need to know.
It is also particularly bothersome because the Federal Government has no land anywhere in the country on which to embark on livestock development, except the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Agriculture should be a state affair and not a federal business. Any plan, by whatever name it may be called, that involves Federal Government annexation of ancestral land of indigenous peoples in any part of Middle-Belt and Southern Nigeria must be seen as a revival of the infamous Buhari RUGA Settlement scheme which was roundly rejected by Southern and Middle Belt peoples.
More seriously, President Tinubu’s Livestock Development Plan seeks to sweep under the carpet, all the atrocities committed by armed herders during eight years of former President Buhari. According to Nigerian Security Tracker, about 4,068 persons were killed by armed herdsmen and bandits between June 2015 and January 2019. Armed marauders killed hundreds of people in Christian communities in Benue State alone between April and June 14, 2025.
Under this condition, the first rational action for President Tinubu to take in checking the heightened insecurity posed by armed herders is to declare them as terrorists as the Institute for Economics and Peace has already done. This will enable security agencies to invoke the Anti-Terrorism Law of the country to deal with the situation. Secondly, those whose land has been violently seized in Benue, Plateau, Taraba and other states must be restored to their ancestral land. Such restitution is the irreducible minimum.
President Tinubu’s approach to the Benue massacres also raises serious questions about the status of his political party as a progressive political formation because progressivism is antithetic to authoritarianism. Progressivism does not recognise any special or private privileges, rights or power beyond that stipulated by the law of the land. It strongly abhors injustice, man’s inhumanity to man, religious bigotry and violent extremism. It aims to neutralize and re-educate the carriers of these debilitating social vices with a view to enhancing overall social harmony. Its raison de tre is protection of vulnerable and under-privileged members of the society.
It is the height of injustice to give or propose giving Tivland or the land of any other indigenous people of Nigeria to terrorists. Any plan that leaves the innocent victims of the armed herders in Internally Displaced Persons’ camps while allowing the armed herdsmen to keep the land which they seized, is not only heartless and unconscionable, but also amounts to aiding and abetting terrorism.
If President Tinubu succeeds in making Governor Alia to give Tivland to terrorists, this is likely to encourage the invaders to intensify their violent campaign in other parts of the country in order to be compensated with land. This will amount to official advancement of the Fulanisation of Nigeria, which will inevitably spell the doom of the country.
The way to assist underprivileged citizens is not to give what rightfully belongs to others to them. The first step in the liberation of nomadic cattle herders from their historic exploitation is to give them access to formal and non-formal education to enhance their well-being and participation in the nation-building process. The National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE), was established in 1989, but the Fulani leaders of the target population shunned the schools established by the Commission and insisted on roaming with their cows. Basic education which is necessary for appropriate training and impartation of technical skills in modern trends of cattle rearing was denied the herders.
When they are empowered with basic education and requisite skills, it becomes absolute unnecessary and uncalled for to locate Fulani herders in all the states of the federation. There is more than sufficient land in the Sambisa Forest in North-East Nigeria, believed to be about 60,000 square kilometers, mainly undeveloped.
Since the Nigerian Army has reportedly cleared Sambisa Forest of Boko Haram insurgents, all genuine Fulani cattle herders could be taken to such place. The Tinubu administration could assist willing state governments concerned to use such land mass to effect any livestock development scheme he wishes and leave the Southern and Middle-Belt states alone. The area can provide beef and dairy products for the whole of the West African subregion and beyond if properly managed.
The herders do not need to come to Southern and Middle-Belt States that have much less land. The argument that Fulani lack grazing fields in Northern states is not valid. As Professor Patrick Muoboghare once explained following protracted attacks and killing of his kinsmen by Fulani militia in Uwheru Kingdom of Delta State in March 2020, “the rice that we consume in Nigeria comes from the north, meaning their soil can sustain rice farming. Anywhere rice can grow, grass can grow there. All the carrots, tomatoes and onions come from the north. The northern soil is not sterile but fertile. It is just that there is an attempt to claim our land and it is a kind of Jihad.” (Perez Brisibe, DELTA KILLINGS: But for protection herdsmen receive, we can deal with them – Prof Muoboghare, Vanguard online, March 1, 2020)
Any herder who produces beef or cow milk from the Sambisa Forest ranches should transport these finished products to point of sale in other parts of the country. For example, most of the frozen fish and other sea foods sold in Nigeria are imported from Asian countries. The Asians do not need to come to occupy rivers in the Niger Delta to make their products available in Nigeria.
It is therefore undesirable for the Presidency to ask Benue State or any other state to surrender communal land of indigenous peoples to terrorists, who have no allegiance to the Nigerian state or its constitution and who do not share the same cultural values with the indigenes.
The APC administration has not addressed the fundamental issue of the acculturation process that produces the terrorist mind-set. It is dangerous in the extreme to distribute that destructive cultural virus in all states of the country.
The survival needs and peaceful development of indigenous peoples of Nigeria demand that they must resolutely reject the latest plan to sow seeds of discord in their territories. If the Presidency is able to lure some greedy and unpatriotic Southern State Governors with financial packages to concede implantation of permanent Fulani enclaves in their states, such a dangerous design will surely be the foundation of the biggest and most intractable armed conflict in Nigeria in the foreseeable future. A stitch in time saves nine.
*Chris O. O. Biose (Human Rights Activist) chrisoobiose@gmail.com.
