The idea of moving the Fulanis up North back to their ruga and carry out all development projects such as building schools, clinics/health centres/hospitals, wells and veterinary clinics, etc, as contained in the original PARE booklet which I had written with inputs from my boss was to solve the problems leading to the perennial frictions/conflicts between the herders and the farmers, and sometimes resulting in avoidable deaths, and encourage a permanent sedentary life and not to use the settlements for political, religious and expansionist purposes as is being conceived now by Khalifa Muhammadu Buhari, and later to be upgraded to emirate status, where all Nigerians outside of the Muslim faith will be forced to embrace Islam and the Sharia law.
But where are the funds coming from – the national treasury and where else?
The House of Saud, OIC, Islamic Development bank, D-8, UAE and other Islamic nations bent on putting a sword on the thing that holds Nigerians together as a people?
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE ORIGINAL PARE AS PREPARED BY MR ROMEO BARBEROPOULOS, FOUNDER AND FINANCIER OF THE PASTORAL REOLVE (PARE)
As promised earlier, below is the Executive Summary of the original The Pastoral Resolve as prepared by the initiator/founder and financier of the pastoralist NGO, Mr Romeo V. Barberopoulos:
“PARE
A MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED TO THE HONOURABLE MINISTER OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The nomadic pastoralists are amongst the most disadvantaged groups in the country. Problems they currently face that demand urgent attention include:
- Poor and inadequate veterinary services
- Lack of sufficient access to social services such as water for both animal and human consumption, hospital and education, etc
- The inability of the pastoralists to participate in political issues.
OBJECTIVES OF THE PASTORAL RESOLVE
To influence, encourage, assist in promoting the interests and welfare of all nomadic pastoralists and economic pastoralism aimed at boosting the food industry in the next millennium.
PASTORALISM AND PREVIOUS AGRICULTURAL POLICY
The 1965 agricultural policy has been found to be highly deficient. So far about 1, 295, 293.388 hectares are known to have been gazetted throughout the country. Shockingly, virtually all of them are yet to be developed. There are currently under severe threat of various kinds of encroachment arising from human factors and desertification. In States such as Plateau, Kaduna, Benue, Jigawa and Niger States, most of the proposed grazing reserves have been taken over by crop cultivators and other development projects.
PASTORALISM AND THE ECONOMY
It is a major contributor to the national economy – meat, hides and skins, milk – a major source of protein.
NEW APPROACH TO PASTORAL DEVELOPMENT
All projects aimed at developing the sector should involve all the stakeholders. The goal should generally be on economic pastoralism rather than the traditional subsistence practice.
ASSISTANCE FROM YOUR MINISTRY
We would like your Ministry to assist in the provision of infrastructure such as (water, veterinary clinic, health clinic, schools, production of fodder, etc) at the grazing reserves and micro-credit that will boost the cottage industry – dairy products, hides and skins, etc. Also the Land Use Act should be reviewed with a view to correcting past errors.”
***Minister of Science and Technology at the time: EBITIMI BANIJO during the infamous Olusegun Obasanjo Government.
The reader must be aware that The Pastoral Resolved was incorporated on April 9, 1999 and took off formally in 2000 after longs years of planning and consultations with all the stakeholders, a virtue thoroughly lacking in Khalifa Muhammadu Buhari, who has been acting like a bloody tyrant that he actually is and as if his is a military Government that is unitaristic in nature.
Lest I forget, guess correct, take one pack of guguru: who was the President of Nigeria in 2000 when The Pastoral Resolve formally took off that year?
Telling it again like it is, my boss and mentor, RVB took the chicken seller along well, well – g-a-n ni. Be ni!
Chairman (RVB), even told me that when he met the Pro – NOUN Professor of THEO-OLOJA, at a meeting of the nation’s captains of industry, he informed BABA CLIMATE Change (BCC) about what we were about regarding THE PASTORAL RESOLVE, and the Professor who is yet to give account to RUGA NLA (the Presidency) about his whereabouts during the DDC (Democracy Day Celebration), actually commended us and promised to help.
If he can to have the courage and courtesy to tell the people of the rock that he went to sell chickens on the DDC, e go stop speculations and wandering imaginations from wandering from North to South, and West to East. Em… what’s the name of that his kinkini enemy at the Presidency….Garus, please take note!
Junaid Mohammed and Professor Ben Nwabueze had arguably at various times claimed that the North, whatever be their definition of the “North” has 78% and 75%, respectively of Nigeria’s land mass, yet they still want to use FULANI SETTLEMENTS to steal land from the indigenous fifle of the Lower Niger, who by the above concocted figures from Junaid and Nwabueze have just 22% and 25% land mass out of the nation’s total land mass of 356,700 sq miles, respectively. Haba Mallam.
Buhari and his gang of land thieves from ECOWAS and the far East are invited to meditate on the Rotary’s 4-Way Test as below – Concerning what Mr Buhari and his ilk think, say or do:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
ABRAHAMIC PRINCIPLES OF CONFLICT MANAGEMENT & RESOLUTION
APPLICATION OF THE ABRAHAMIC FORMULA/METHOD/STRATEGY/SOLUTION TO THE NATIONAL CRISIS OF THE PERENIAL CONFLICT BETWEEN THE (FULANI) HERDERS AND THE FARMERS IN AND AROUND NIGERIA
Genesis 13 New International Version (NIV)
Abram and Lot Separate
13 So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him. 2 Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.
3 From the Negev he went from place to place until he came to Bethel, to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier 4 and where he had first built an altar. There Abram called on the name of the Lord.
5 Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. 6 But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. 7 And quarreling arose between Abram’s herders and Lot’s. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.
8 So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives. 9 Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”
10 Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) 11 So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company: 12 Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. 13 Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.
14 The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. 15 All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring[a] forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. 17 Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”
18 So Abram went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he pitched his tents. There he built an altar to the Lord.”
YES, OBJ WAS AWARE OF THE PROBLEMS AND WAS DULY BRIEFED ABOUT THE THEN FATALISTIC INCESSANT CLASHES BETWEEN THE FULANI HERDERS AND THE FARMERS, BUT JUST WHAT DID HE DO?
In the coming days, I will publish either in full or part of the blueprint I personally presented to President Olusegun Obasanjo during my courtesy call on him on October 14, 2002 at the State House in Abuja in which I focussed on the worrisome clashes between the herders and the farmers, a relevant portion which was headed: ECONOMIC PASTORALISM , and part of a follow-up blueprint delivered to him when on holiday at Ota on my behalf by our mutual mentor, Chief S.O. Fadahunsi.
God bless our Nigeria.
Johnny Boy
ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM.
** *The Voice of One crying in the Diaspora…proudly leading the NATIONALISTS UNITY MOVEMENT OF NIGERIA (NUMON).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Odey Aduma was formerly Executive Secretary, Foundry Association of Nigeria; Southern Coordinator and the Public Affairs Manager of President Muhammadu Buhari's pastoralists NGO - THE PASTORAL RESOLVE; Chairman, Editorial Board of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc; member, National Committee for the Nigerian Youth Festival, 1993; Core Committee, the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF)/Ford Foundation, Kano Eastern Bypass Roadside Tree Planting Exercise, 1997; member, core Committee of the National Technology Summit and was the Summit's chairman for two of its sub-committees - Publicity and Exhibition, 1998; member of the Administrative Panel of Inquiry set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo to investigate the illegal trade in and smuggling of endangered species of wild fauna and flora into and out of Nigeria, 2003.
He was the Chairman, Planning Committee of the General Murtala Muhammed Memorial Lecture for two consecutive years, 2001 and 2002 before it attained a Foundation status in 2002, having first been upgraded to that status in 2001.
General Murtala Muhammed was one of Nigeria's former Heads of State and was killed in the abortive coup led by the then Colonel Buka Suka Dimka on February 13, 1976.
That same capacity saw Mr Aduma delivering huge successes during the Daily Times of Nigeria's 75th Anniversary (in which he raked in N6, 000, 000 into the coffers of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc) and also, playing a similar role in a similar capacity during Dr Isma'il Babatunde Jose's 75th Birth Day. Dr Jose, doyen of Nigerian journalism was Mr Aduma's personal mentor. That relationship was so close and solid such that whilst Aduma was leaving the shores of Nigeria for Britain in 2003, Dr Jose gave him N10, 000.00.
In 1992, Mr Aduma's contributions to journalism was recognised with the awards of the Nigeria Media Merit Award as the Investigative Reporter of the Year and the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence as the Reporter of the Year, and the British Chevening Scholarship, which saw him studying International Journalism with Specialism in Environment at City, University of London in 2003-2004.
Aduma is the author of the inspirational best-seller, THE DIAMONDS ARE HERE and the founder of Vigilance, the World's Leading Security Magazine and Scorpion News Corp, in addition to founding the Nationalists Unity Movement of Nigeria (NUMON).
He is also, involved in professional mentoring at Post Graduate level on the City, University of London’s Post Graduate Professional Mentoring Strand.
