By Dele Sobowale

NOTE: THE INHERITORS – LAWSON GROUP OF COMPANIES will continue soon. At the moment, we have an emerging catastrophe on our hands in Nigeria which, more than the Boko Haram war, could escalate into another civil war engulfing the whole country.

Nigerians in at least, 17 states are up in arms against the Fulani herdsmen/women and children. Something must be done urgently before they are wiped out.  LAWSON can wait.

“The proposal which emerged at the end of the National Economic Council meeting presided over by Vice-President Namadi Sambo, is another grand design to Islamise the nation. Fulani herdsmen are another chapter of Boko Haram. If President Goodluck Jonathan accepts the proposal, he should be ready for the consequences.”  Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, CAN President, NATION, March 30, 2014.

The warning by the CAN President came after Dr Adewunmi, the Minister for Agriculture, had announced that on Wednesday, March 25, 2014, the National Economic Council (NEC), chaired by the Vice-President, had decided to set up a committee to determine the modalities for establishing grazing reserves for the Fulani herdsmen and their livestock across the country.

This is the first time that Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor would publicly disagree with the Jonathan administration on a major policy decision. Unfortunately, Oritsejafor based his objections to the proposal on religious grounds – when indeed it is not. Cattle driven by their shepherds into farmlands don’t discriminate between farms and crops belonging to Christians and non-Christians.

To a cow or goat, an ear of corn is food; it does not ask who owns it. In all honesty, I think the Pastor had introduced an element which should not come into the matter.
Like a cancer, which had been benign, the escalating and increasingly violent conflicts between Fulani heardsmen/women and farmers nationwide, has suddenly exploded on us in a startling way.

Like somnambulists, we had woken up tottering on the edge of a precipice. Unless care is taken, whatever policies are eventually adopted, might be too little; and too late. Another civil war might have started.
One reason accounts for that pessimism. Cattle, like human beings don’t eat in the long run. They must have grass and water today; otherwise they go on a rampage.

The proposed reserved grazing lands are still many years, or at least months, down the line. The war for the land on which the cattle will graze had started in earnest and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives – cattle and human – are already at stake. Once again, President Jonathan has my sympathies. He is at the end of a long chain of events, not created by his government – dating back to as long as 1914 or before – which have suddenly created the grounds for conflict and, possibly, all out war NOW.

However, before the shooting (verbal or guns) starts, in earnest, it is necessary for all of us to get familiar with some facts which will not suddenly change and which might guide us when making collective and individual decisions on this matter. These might be called the Iron Laws of our economic (read FOOD) life in Nigeria today. Any rash step and we topple into the abyss – the end of which nobody knows.

The first was made known to me by a retired Professor of Animal Science, from the University of Ibadan, Professor B.K. Ogunmodede. If you want to be intelligent, first ensure that one of your senior brothers is a professor. I was lucky in that respect.

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