As the debates on the necessity, or otherwise, of establishing Ruga settlements across the country continue, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia North and the Chief Whip of the Senate, has joined the fray. He revealed that as the then governor of Abia State, he provided land and basic amenities for the herders, first at Umuahia, before relocating them to where they presently occupy, near Lokpanta, Abia State.
On that basis, he boasted that he was the first to establish Ruga settlement in the Southeast, and that it created no problem. He eulogized cattle herding as a profitable venture, which most ‘big men’ beyond Fulani extraction, are into. He therefore saw nothing wrong in implementing the Ruga vexed issue, which lately accentuated the national fault lines in an unprecedented manner.
For me, as an indigene of the LGA where he relocated the cattle market and a former boss of the Local Government Council, I take serious exception to Senator Kalu’s insensitive self-promotional build-up. His speech did not capture the mood of our people, and therefore is out of touch with the smouldering tension occasioned by the uncontrolled movement of cattle in all the nooks and cranny of the area.
It is pertinent to note that what we had in Gariki (where Abia Mall is presently located) in Umuahia was not a Ruga settlement. It was a cattle market, which existed before the creation of Abia State in 1991. The then Military Administrator, Col. Ike Nwosu moved it out of the city centre to the suburb of the state capital. So, it was not Kalu that moved the cattle market from Gariki. After a brief stay at Umuahia suburb, the cattle market was later moved down to Okigwe, Imo State, along the Enugu-Port-Harcourt Expressway.
By the way, the template for a Ruga settlement as proposed by the federal government transcends an ordinary cattle market. When the cattle market constituted nuisance to Okigwe environs, and bred unresolved issues with the Imo State government, Kalu exploited his incumbency influence and relocated them to a large expanse of land customarily owned by some communities of Lokpaukwu, Lekwesi and Umuelem Isuochi along the Umunneochi LGA stretch of Enugu-Port-Harcourt Expressway. And because it is close to the popular Better Life Rural Market Lokpanta, the cattle market erroneously bears its location as Lokpanta. This happened in 2004, and the hapless and emasculated landowners acquiesced for fear of incurring the wrath of Kalu-led government. Today, the entire area hosting the cattle market is a sorry sight.
A trip to the cattle market depicts arguably, the worst level of humanitarian devastation in the whole Southeast. It is tantamount to Thomas Hobbes state of nature where life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. The area is a ghetto. It is chaotic, lawless, insecure, disorderly, despicable and full of gigantic tonnes of filth. The disgusting odour that oozes out from the area is indescribably unhealthy. A few years back, a cholera outbreak in the area as a result of open human and animal defecations along the streams led to the death of several persons. No sane government should allow her valued citizenry to be quartered there. It is that bad! The dual sections of the road are impassable. Heavy trucks are disingenuously parked along the road with reckless abandon. During rainy reason, collapsed vehicles on top of death-trap potholes used to cause long stretch of traffic jam for hours.
For commuters who ply the route, the horrible experiences are comparable to a camel passing through an eye of a needle. People are daily subjected to anguish and human-made frustrations. The locals who are largely sedentary farmers bear the brunt of mindless plundering of farm crops, as a result of open and unrestricted grazing. The common cases of rape and sexual violence against under-aged girls and women in their farms with accusing fingers on herdsmen, who take off from the cattle market, are under-reported.
The hitherto sleepy communities are now enveloped with palpable fear. The menacingly swagger and bravado of the trigger-happy herdsmen who trample on farms with impunity in Umuchieze axis turned it to a slave camp. Except for the military checkpoints at Lomara Junction and Mbato/Leru border, the incessant armed robbery attacks witnessed along the roads that lead to Nneato and Isuochi hinterland would have continued unabated. And security reports indicated that the suspects usually take cover in the cattle market. Of course, the whole forests and ancestral enclaves in Ngodo, Amuda, Mbala, Umuaku to the end of Abia-Anambra boundary are all desecrated for transhumance practices. One wonders what the protagonists of the obnoxious policy intend to achieve. The suspicion is that Ruga settlement is a “devious attempt to secure usufructuary rights to land and exploit the political opportunities that such rights may confer on the Fulani”.
The entire Southeast has a total land mass of 29,833 km2. Abia State takes 6,320 km2 of the lands, while Umunneochi LGA occupies only 368km2. As such, the little land that we have is a prized asset to our people. But come to think of it, how would Senator Kalu feel if the land he acquired to build his private university at Igbere is forcibly taken over from him for a Ruga settlement? That would be unfair! Therefore, any attempt to use state power to usurp people’s lands is considered as soulless capitalism whose “widening social divisions made individualism unsustainable” according to Paul Collier.
We must disambiguate the fixated mindset of nomadism in order to bring a lasting solution to livestock management challenge in the country. There is no consensus of conspiracy against the Fulani who are predominantly in cattle rearing business. Nobody is against cattle rearing. I have even advocated somewhere that the business is a goldmine, and that our people should invest in it. But it must be through ranching on a private arrangement, and improved technological methods. Senator Kalu should understand that he is no longer a private person. He is now representing a constituency. He should gauge their sentiments at home before taking a position in any burning national issues. Finally, I recommend to him a copy of Tell Magazine of February 19, 2001 where he granted an interview entitled: “Why Igbo leaders are errand boys”.
Dr. Uche is a former chairman of Umunneochi LGA, Abia State.
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