Buhari Stoking Civil War with Grazing Sites Review, Says HURIWA

A human rights and advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has warned that President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval for a review of 368 grazing sites across 25 states in Nigeria was an inevitable invitation to civil war.

The body therefore advised the President to perish the “illegal and toxic idea” unless he nursed an agenda to destabilise Nigeria.

HURIWA in a media statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, said it was unthinkable that President Buhari was bent on coercing native peoples to surrender their ancestral lands for the purposes of donating such involuntarily by his administration to Fulani herdsmen.

They added that the preferential treatment by the President of his kinsmen 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, were 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.

“HURIWA is therefore asking the President to desist from taking steps and doing things that will plunge Nigeria into a long drawn civil war. It is ironic 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 of State in which he said he doesn’t want to quit the stage in 2023 as a failure.

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,” they said

They alleged that the President had breached his oath of office and several sections of the constitution which forbids him from using his office to confer undue advantage on any section of the country.

“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,” they contended.