The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, has raised the alarm about the latest move by President Muhammadu Buhari to establish integrated farm estates in the 108 senatorial districts nationwide saying it is a ploy to settle herdsmen.
Recall that the president had directed the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) to set up integrated farm estates nationwide.
The scheme, according to the executive secretary of NALDA, Mr. Paul Ikonne, is aimed at engaging youths to achieve food security in the shortest possible time.
But Afenifere, in a statement by its secretary general, Mr. Sola Ebiseni, said the planned programme was another backdoor strategy of acquiring land in furtherance of the plan to settle herdsmen across Nigeria.
He explained that the integrated farm estates are designed to accommodate all forms of agricultural practices, including animal husbandry, which will effectively earmark a portion of the acquired vast land “as effective grazing reserves without saying so.”
“Nigerians are in no way deceived that the urgency purportedly attached to the programme by President Buhari is of equal proportional zeal with the creation of settled villages for Fulani herdsmen, from everywhere and nowhere, on the ancestral lands of other nationalities, which in the fullness of time will become colonies of tyranny as they are in Southern Kaduna, on the Plateau and many other parts of the Middle Belt.
“The cry across the land is that our President should rise to his primary responsibility of ensuring security of life and property, especially for the farmers, that they may feed the nation. If we may ask, will the Federal Government also build military barracks stronger than the Nigerian Defence Academy in those farm estates?
“President Buhari needs also be reminded that none of his predecessors, who showed greater interests in agriculture, was this covetous of land and seeking to work over and above the federating states; not even the military government of Obasanjo in its Operation Feed the Nation, nor Shehu Shagari’s Green Revolution.
“Rather than seeking land by force, which it has no powers over by the constitution and the Land Use Act, and imposing the type of agricultural practices on the states, let the Federal Government provide resources and incentives to the states in their areas of comparative advantage.
“Thus, in their choice of agricultural endeavours, the Niger Delta states may choose aquaculture, while the northwest sticks to animal husbandry. The President has not denied that his government has disbursed more than N6 billion to his Katsina home state for ranching without breathing over them for specific land.
“Apart from the federal government having no powers over land, it cannot not also compel the states to acquire the ancestral land of other people for the personal use of others.
“Constitutionally though, agriculture is under the concurrent legislative list; the powers of the Federal Government thereon under item ‘H’ of the Constitution, paragraphs 17-20, are limited and not extended to any activities giving it powers over land in view of the Land Use Act, which has equal constitutional status,” Ebiseni said.
Afenifere therefore called on the people to reject the Greek gift which the proposed 108 integrated farm estates represent.
“For the states in the southwest, including Edo and Delta, this government has nothing to teach us in farm estates. Let Buhari chase the killer terrorists from our land that the people may prosper. We are sceptical of these Greek gifts.”
