Don’t Surrender Your Authority Over Land Use To Grazing Reserves, Group Urges Governors

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria Sunday, August 22nd, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – A frontline Civil Rights Advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked state governors not to surrender their lawful authority over land administration to actualize the controversial grazing reserves recently approved by President Mohammadu Buhari.

President Buhari had approved a review of 368 grazing sites across 25 states in Nigeria, following the recommendations of committee chaired by his Chief of Staff, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari.

Among others, the committee had recommended the collection of field data collection on 368 Grazing Reserves across 25 states to assess encroachment and encroachers, stakeholder engagements and sensitization.

The committee also recommended production of maps and geo-mapping/tagging of sites, analysis of findings and report preparations as well as design appropriate communication on Grazing Reserves and operations.

The association said it is unthinkable why President Buhari is bent on coercing native peoples to surrender their ancestral lands for the purposes of donating such involuntarily by his administration to his kinsmen – Fulani herdsmen.

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA dismissed the committee and its recommendations as unknown to law and of no effect.

The group dismissed the directive of President Buhari on the so-called grazing sites as an unmitigated unconstitutional act given that the extant Land Use law governing land administration gives the ownership of landed assets in each state of the Federation to the state government.

“For the avoidance of doubts and from abundance of scholarly submissions, Mr. President should note that the Land Use Act, enacted in 1978, was meant to standardise land administration systems across the country. It vested all urban land within a state in the state governor, and all non-urban land in the local governments in which they are found. (There are currently 36 states in Nigeria, and 774 local government areas.) The state governor and local government authorities are empowered by the Act to grant ‘statutory rights of occupancy’.

“The Act also provided for the establishment of land use and allocation committees to advise state governors, and land allocation advisory committees to advise local governments. Excluded from the control of state and local governments are all lands designated to be federal – for example land occupied by federal agencies and departments. In 1978 the Land Use Act – which governs land use and administration in Nigeria, and is included in the Constitution – abolished all existing freehold systems, and provided for a nationwide leasehold system. The leases are typically granted for 99 years, the maximum period stipulated by the Act”, HURIWA said.

The group therefore asked the governors not to surrender their lawful authority regarding land administration to be misapplied to satisfy the discriminatory treatment in favour of Fulani herdsmen.

The association further described the Presidential approval and directive as an inevitable invitation to civil war and asked the President to perish the illegal and toxic idea unless he nurses an agenda to destabilize Nigeria.

HURIWA advised the President to desist from taking steps and doing things that will plunge Nigeria into a long drawn civil war, adding that it was ironical that the ridiculous public statement announcing that the President plans to give grazing sites to Fulani herdsmen coincided with his briefing to the military chiefs in which he said he doesn’t want to quit the stage in 2023 as a failure.

The group stressed that the only way for the President to quit office in 2023 as a statesman is for him to comply with his Constitutional oath of office and treat all Nigerians equitably and equally and stop pampering his kinsmen.

The association noted that the discriminatory treatment by the President as far as issues relating his kinsmen are concerned since coming to office including his failure to arrest and prosecute suspected armed Fulani herdsmen responsible for some 6,000 deaths since 2015, his decision to give them a lot of concessions in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and rural development and Water resources in the execution of projects, are all unconstitutional acts.

“This is the first time in over 60 years of Nigeria’s independence that Nigeria is foisted with a fatalistic administration whose head of executive arm is doing everything outside of the law to arm twist other ethnicities just so the president’s kinsmen are awarded the ancestral lands for their private commercial business of grazing cattle whereas all over the world those who deal with cows do so using their own landed assets to set up ranches to undertake their business”, the group stressed.