 You're welcome back to The Breakfast on Plus TV Africa. Our first conversation is about one of the biggest issues in Nigeria at the moment, and it's about grazing roots. President Mohamed Abu-Hari, during an interview with a TV station a few days ago, had said that he gave an order to the attorney general of the Federation, Abu Bakr Malimi, to basically revive grazing roots in the country based on the Gazette laws of the First Republic. But lots of stakeholders have been reacting negatively to this state or against it, and many others. So we're discussing this grazing roots and the opposition to it this morning with a journalist and author, Mr. Fahy Farimi. Good morning. Thanks for joining us from the UK. Morning. Thanks for having me. All right. Let's first begin with some history. How did the grazing roots, you know, take place and begin? OK, so this is an interesting point. I mean, when we talk about reviving, I think the first thing we probably need to disabuse our minds about is that the solution to whatever the solution is to the heather crisis today is not in Nigeria's past, you know, whatever the solution will be is going to be in the future. We have to design it. The past was not glorious. It was not some kind of utopia where, you know, farmers and heathers got along. That's not actually true. I mean, one of the things we talk about in our book is that this is a problem that has been in Nigeria for at least 200 years, probably longer. You know, when we go back just to give one example, you know, the jihad that kicked off in Northern Nigeria in 1804, when it kicked off in Sokoto, there were other parts of the country where, you know, almost kind of like a quote unquote freelance jihad kicked off, where people had been having local issues and then that fled up into jihad, taking, you know, a granted of the general insecurity that had blown up. So you had a place like in Northern Kevin, where a guy called Amubaka Ludjie, he started off in jihad there. And, you know, this fight was basically caused by constant clashes between farmers and heathers. You can see you can go back to the early 1930s, where, you know, the French who were in charge of Cameroon, for example, blocked Nigerian full and heathers from coming into Cameroon as part of their grazing routes because they wanted to avoid these clashes with farmers. So there is no time in our past where we can say, because we had grazing routes, everything was fine. And it was all, it was all rosy and dandy. So I think that's one of the things that we should first disabuse our minds about because we have a tendency to form this myth about how, you know, the past was so glorious. We do it with textile, for example, where we talk about, oh, we once had a glorious textile. Because these things are not really true, you know, grazing routes are just, you know, I mean, they're not magic, you know, cows are very, very, you cannot just put a cow anywhere and then you just expect them to stop feeding themselves. And then it's just because there's grass there, for example, cows will not eat tall grass. They don't like tall grass. They prefer shorter grass, you know, and that shorter grass, the type of grass you will probably find on farms, you know, so which is where all these clashes come from. We need to be, we need to make a deliberate solution. Something we've never tried before, which is that, you know, when you have grazing routes and grazing reserves, you actually have to plant and grow the type of food or the type of grass that the cows will, that will attract the herd that allow them to stay in those places, you know, not to stop them from leaving those places and then going into people's farms. So I think the first thing I'll just want to say is that, you know, there is no solution to this problem in Nigeria's past. You know, we've had this problem for centuries, at least two centuries, probably longer. It has always been it. Now it is a lot more pronounced because of population growth and climate change and urbanization, which has actually reduced the amount of space. But, you know, if we want to solve this problem, we need to think about the future and what it will look like and then design solutions based on that. So far, I mean, you've mentioned 200 years back. Well, why would you say in 200 years we have not been able to change, you know, a method of raring cattle? We've not been able to, you know, move with the times as a country in 200 years. Like, did it need to get to, you know, a conversation about death and killings and clashes before we start to talk about these things? Definitely not. No, you know, I mean, this is Nigeria. We have a lot of problems that we are allowed to face, you know, and we have an elite who like to play the game of breakmanship. You know, our elite have come to believe that, you know, the country can go to the edge and somehow it will pull back. No, they're not doing anything to solve the problem. But, you know, we play these games all the time. For example, now we're looking at a station where the country is literally in a serious crisis. And what are the elite thinking about? They're probably thinking, let's just get to 2023, we'll have elections and then change government and there are another set of people. You know, so this game of breakmanship has been with us for a long time, we don't solve problems, we paper over them for a while and then they appear and then we are surprised, you know, when they appear all over again. This problem, you know, and I tell people this all the time, the United States had this exact same problem of clashes between cattle herders and farmers. And it was actually more violent in America because obviously everyone had guns. But, you know, a series of policy choices and changes solve this problem completely, where it no longer exists today. If we want to solve this problem, which is why I said we want to solve this problem, it is in our future. We have not, it is mainly started from an economic problem whereby there is no way for a cattle rarer to break even if he has to pay for his cow's food. That is the fundamental problem, the fundamental, the basic underlying problem. If a cattle herder has to pay for the food his cow, the food and water, it cannot make a profit. A friend of mine shared something recently where, you know, it's a cost of feeding a cow in a day is about 1,500 Nair. That cow, if you are lucky, will produce two liters of milk. A liter of milk is 250. So if you produce two liters of milk, you send it for 500 Nair, you are still in a deficit of 1,000 Nair in a day. So this problem is put and opposed, solved by going into farms and eating food for free. That is the way it was, you know. So that's one side of the problem. The other part of the problem that makes it difficult to solve is that culturally, the nomadic Fulani are very, very proud and stubborn people, you know. And I don't say this as a bad thing, you know, you know, they are, this is just who they are, you know. Culturally, they don't, for example, they don't like farming. You know, so they, I mean, they consider things like farming beneath them. They don't like butchering, for example, actually butchering the cows or something. They consider that another person's work. So if, you know, there are this life of farming, and this was something that one of the presidents, special advisor recently said, that there is for farming that they are not going to plant the grass for their cows to grow. And this gives us a problem, you know, if they are not going to plant the grass or the crop that their cows will eat, then who is going to do that job? You know, so, so all of these problems, all of these challenges have allowed us to, you know, and again, when you combine with the fact that kind of emits we have, it just means that this problem just keeps getting kicked down the road. Maybe we might have a period where things are quiet for five minutes, but then it flares up in a bigger way after all. So if we want to solve the problem, we need to grasp that nettle and design a solution for the future whereby, in the future, whereby we know that, you know, we can eliminate these clashes once and for all. Again, I mentioned, it's not impossible. The United States is facing a bigger and a more dangerous version of this and they solve this. So, yes, you've raised lots of points that would bring up much later in the conversation. Well, looking at the president's directive, you know, to revive Grayson Roots, do you see any rationale behind that? Well, the president is a very, very nostalgic person. He seems to think that, you know, things are always better in the past. Well, I guess it's not something unique to him, you know, generally, people always think that the past was better than the present. So he probably thinks that Grayson Roots were at the solution when maybe, when it was younger, maybe Grayson Roots were peaceful or people went through them. But again, like I mentioned, you know, Grayson Roots is one thing. But the cows are not going to eat what they're not just going to go to any grass and eat it. You know, cows are picky. We need to understand that, you know, cows always make fun of cows that they have the best PR in the world. You know, they're very lazy. They eat all day. They sleep and then after feeding a cow for one year, it will give you one cow, you know, just one, you know, compared to pigs, for example, where a pig can eat anything and then it will give you like loads of piglets in a year. You know, but cows have, you know, like I said, they have very, very good PR and they manipulated us human beings because of the beef we get from them. So you are not just going to put a cow on a Grayson Roots and then the cow will just see any grass anywhere and eat it. No, you know, like I mentioned, the tall grass, they don't like tall grass. They prefer the short grass. It's sweeter to the cow. So even if you revive this Grayson Roots, you have to do that work of ensuring that the feed that they like. So who should do that work, Mr. Farimi? Should that be the job of the government? Or if we say that these, you know, herding is a private activity, should the fact, should the herders be doing that? Well, yes, so that's a good question. I mean, who should do that job? Well, I think that at the start, you need heavy government involvement to subsidize a lot of these things, to get it going. So it's like a seed, you know, it's like a seed investment by the government. Things like, for example, you just use the more recent example, vaccines, you know, when the world needed vaccines last year, if we had relied on just private capital to do it, it might have taken a bit of a bit longer. But, you know, governments, especially the United States government, United Kingdom government, they stepped in and sort of said, OK, you know, whatever you produce, we'll buy it. You know, so that was government stepping into taking away the risk of somebody producing a vaccine and then nobody buying it. So a lot of people, for example, produce vaccines that, you know, whatever happens, they will get their money back. So this is the kind of thing that we would need the government to do. The government to, even if you're going to get private capital to go in, at least at the start, the government has to enter and take away a number of the risk from it, you know, at that risk, we could think that security and ensuring that people's investment is rewarded. So if people are investing in, so maybe government can step in and say, OK, whatever grass you produce, if you are able to produce us this specific type of grass, which is the grass that cows like, any amount you produce, we will buy it off you for, I don't know, three, four years. You know, over time, the government will reduce its involvement until it then becomes sustainable, whereby maybe you can get the if the grass is better, maybe then the full army cows can then start to produce more milk. And again, this is the factor. If they start to produce more milk, then that milk can generate income. And then you get to the point, maybe over five, six, seven, ten years whereby a full army in Nigerian cow can then produce enough milk to be sustainable in a day whereby the sale of the milk can then pay for the food that the cow eats. So this is the kind of thing that this is the kind of thing that the government should step in to do, basically entering at the beginning to take away a lot of the risk guaranteeing investment. And then over time, we'll get there. We're wasting too much time. You know, if we start today, we have a shot at solving this problem over the next 10 to 20 years, but every day we don't do it. We're wasting time. So the grazing route is just one part of the solution. The actual investments needed to ensure that the cows that are passing these grazing routes actually have something to eat is another part of the conversation. All right, Mr. Farimi, there's people who would argue that Nigeria is not top five largest cattle or beef or milk producers in the world. There are other countries that have way more cattle than we do, but they don't have this crisis. And, you know, there's also conversations about why in 2021 or in the last couple of years, five, six years, one of the biggest conversations that the giant of Africa has had is on, you know, about cattle, even at the, you know, the expense of human lives in their hundreds and maybe even thousands. So what are your thoughts concerning those statements and why we still are where we are today? And we're even considering government's, you know, intervention with helping cattle rares, why, you know, why we still haven't been able to actually focus on prosecuting and ending the loss of human lives that this has caused? Yeah, I mean, I shared that frustration. You know, it is it is annoying. You know, it's an annoying problem to be dealing with. I mean, here we are on a Tuesday morning in 2021, June, we are talking about cows, you know, if you pick up any Nigerian newspaper today, you are probably going to see stories about cows on the front page. You know, but this means this tells us that this is a problem that we should solve and move on to other things. This is like a gear one problem. You know, there are other problems about cattle that we have not even gotten to at all. There are other things about the beef industry, building a proper beef industry. There are other problems around storage of beef, you know, a cold chain, a value chain whereby, you know, you can you don't have to carry a cow from Canon to Lagos because you don't have a cold chain whereby you now have to carry a cow from the north to the south and kill it in the south so that people can then buy up all of that, you know, we should be able to have an industry whereby you can kill a cow in the north and then transport it, you know, securely in a cold chain down to the south to anybody who wants it. You know, so these are all the problems that are gear four, gear five, you know, when we get there. But we are stuck in gear one. But unfortunately, there's no short cut around it. We need to first solve this very basic problem that we've neglected for so long. The basic problem of how do we get cattle, herders and farmers to live side by side in peace without one person encroaching on the other person's territory and for each in mutual respect, let everybody respect each other's territory. That sort of thing. So this is the problem that is detaining us and we are and we are stuck on it. Unfortunately, if we don't solve this very basic part, we can't move on to the other interest. But we can build a multi-billion dollar cattle industry in Nigeria with all the various derivatives of it. You know, we haven't even touched all of that at all, you know, because we are stuck in this gear one problem. So, you know, I mean, like I said, if we want to move on to other things, we should we should be turning our energy to this particular person who can get rid of it quickly. Again, this is not the hardest part to solve. But we, you know, if we poor resources and poor and direct thinking at it, we can like we have a shot, like I said, in the next 10 to 20 years to eliminate this problem once and for all and then move on to higher quality problems. OK, so we're still in the gear one, like you mentioned, and it's still about grazing roots. So we know that Senate spokesman Najibullah Bashir mentioned that the Gazette of the First Republic is not a federal law and that there is really no backing and no legal basis for what the president has said. Well, in a situation like we've seen where, you know, presidential directives are given without any law that supports it. So what's the likelihood that this grazing reserves or great grazing roots, I beg your pardon, would actually be enforced on state governors and how do you think they might take it, seeing that about 17 of them in the south, you know, openly, you know, banned open grazing? Well, you know, this brings us back to the problem we talked about earlier. You know, like I've mentioned, like I said earlier, there is no solution to this problem in Nigeria's past. We are deceiving ourselves. If you think that you can go and pick up a document from the from the First Republic or in design from the First Republic and then impose it now and then everything will be fine. You always see your time, you know, they have been clashes between headers and farmers. We need to understand this. They have been clashes between headers and farmers for centuries in Nigeria. You know, because it is pronounced now due to climate change, greater cow population, greater human population, more urban density does not mean that in the past, this problem was not there. It was there, you know, we had this clash. So debating over a 1960 something, Gazette or whatever, it's just a waste of time. We're wasting each other's time. What we need, the solution is in the future. In Nigeria of today, what are the challenges? How can we design a solution that takes us to a future in 20, 10, 20 years time where we have eliminated this problem? If we are arguing over the Gazette, you know, it's just another way for me to post shop and kick the problem. And we are not doing anything about it. It's all about what knows are not going to agree because now they've been able to unite and they have all come out and said, oh, no open grazing. So we can actually be fighting this non-tensical issue for five years, another five years, you know, and nothing would, nothing will happen. You know, when maybe when President Buhari leaves the the presidency comes to the south and then the North then takes up the the argument that it's reversed whereby right now is the south has been intransigent and they may be by then. Once they're not out of power, then, you know, we can be kicking this can back and forth for this for another five, ten years. And you can see how problems get unresolved in Nigeria for so long. You know, again, let us forget about what was in some Gazette or whether we can borrow ideas from people. The idea that grazing roots or something because it was written in some first Republic law is the reason why we're having problems today, because we did not implement it. It's complete nonsense. You know, we should be honest with ourselves. How do we get headers to feed their cows in a sustainable way without encroaching on farmers? How do we get? How do we make this thing a sustainable business whereby a header can feed his cows and generate income from milk or anything else that pays for the feeding of his cow? How do we put this thing on a sustainable basis? This business on a sustainable way by headers would then be encouraged to sit in a grazing reserve because there's food there and they don't need to go around trampling on people's farms or looking for food all over the place. And with climate change, this means that they now have to go further and further and further to look for food, because a lot of the old grazing routes are, you know, there. I mean, the things don't grow there anymore as they used to. So we now have we now have this challenge whereby the clashes between headers and farmers are becoming a lot more products. So please, you know, our elite are just posturing. They are not. This is not a serious debate. You know, I could ever want some first Republic law or something. The solution, as I said, again, is in the future. It's not in the past. All right. Let's also talk about the angle on law enforcement, justice for, you know, lives that have been lost, you know, and the possibilities of being able to change the stereotype nomadicful and from, you know, a person who likes to move around with his cattle to a person who understands that, you know, there's, you know, you can actually put your cattle in one place and feed them and, you know, milk them. So if a government, like you've suggested, decides to step in, you know, with its own levels of support and they're able to afford feeding for their cows and all of that, how do you change that culture of being a nomad in these people and then also talk about the law enforcement, you know, aspect of this to save lives? Right. That's a very good question. I always tell people that, you know, one of the things that many people, we don't probably realize is that they are very, very broadly there are two types of full learning, you know, and this has been going on for centuries, you know, there's the settled full learning and these are the scholars, the people who, you know, they come to the town, they settle in one location, they become teachers, they read very, very much there, they've embraced literacy for a very, very, very long time. They intermarry with the local people, they adopt the languages of where they are, you know. So this is the, these are the settled full learning or some people call them the house full learning who are, you know, they embrace education very, very much. Now there's the nomadic full learning, you know, who are very, very different. Now these two groups, they actually have not really liked each other, you know. So I mean, you might think that, oh, you're just looking at two full learning, but they've had challenges between themselves for a very, very long time. Now the nomadic full learning, they don't settle in one place, they move around, they don't like education at all, they still speak the full food, the language, they don't, they don't embrace literacy, they don't intermarry, you know, and they have so many, you know, different cultural aspect, they look at the settled full learning as trade-offs or that sort of thing. So these two groups are very, very different, you know, we've tried many solutions in the past that haven't worked. I mean, if you have a certain age in Nigeria, you probably remember nomadic education from, the former education minister, Professor Babs Fafuwa, when he tried to send people to look for the headers and educate them where they were. It didn't really work out probably, but that just means that we should, we need to try, but as now, from the point of view of culture, well, it's a very, very challenging problem. There are no easy solutions to that. Culture, but culture is malleable, you know. Culture can be changed, you know. But there are people who have been nomadic people in the past and today they are settled people, you know. So again, I feel like, you know, because a lot of their roving about is driven by looking for food for their cattle. If we are able to solve this food problem in a certain location, in grazing results for them, then I think over time, I think that problem will go away. I'm not sure, I'm not convinced that the full learnings enjoy working all over the place in the hot sun, looking for food for their cows themselves. If there is a solution that allows them to stay in one place and have water, have grass for their cows in there, I suspect that over time, it might not happen overnight, but over time, maybe in a generation, you might find that your pastoral full learning loon on their room about because they are able to access their needs in one location. So again, like I mentioned, all of this is driven by climate, so we need serious solutions. In terms of insecurity, well, this is another problem that has plagued Nigeria for a long time, the question of unresolved injustice. So now, because we've allowed this problem to fester, a lot of injustice has built up, we will have to resolve that. And this is not just in lives of it, you have to be able to see this person, right? Somebody has every wrong that's been done to somebody. You have to have a mechanism to resolve that whereby somebody says, ooh, somebody killed my family, killed my wife, killed my child, and you can actually, on behalf of the state, recompense that person. You cannot bring the child back where you can punish the person who did that thing. Justice has to be done visibly so that people can see it. And this is, we cannot escape this. We have to figure out a way, we have to have a system whereby people who have been wrong, somebody took your land, we should be able to give that person back the land and punish the person who took the land. No matter how highly placed that person is, somebody killed, somebody committed murder, we need to be able to find that person, try them and then punish them for the crime that they have committed. And they maybe compensate the person who has suffered the loss. So we have that challenge whereby, even as much as, even if we feel, even if we resolve the injustice problem now by, I don't remember, sending soldiers to go and shoot people, and again, the state also plays a part in fouling this injustice. Where the state, in the process of trying to solve problems, they go and create even more problems. But this, you cannot, I think what I'm trying to say is that, insecurity is only as good as how much you resolve the underlying injustice. Because if you don't, then people will take loads into their own hands. So either you have this spiral that we have where, somebody told me a story some years ago where there were some farmers somewhere in the middle belt, they planted a farm and there's some flanik herders brought their cows and they asked if they could eat from the farm. And the people said, no, the arguments broke out in the end. The cows went ahead anyway and ate from the farm. The farmers then poisoned, they then put some poison on their land. And then the cows came back again and ate and then the cows died. And then the flanis were so upset. And then you have this whole orgy of killing whereby the flanis then went and they attacked the farmers. And then, well, you see, this is the cycle of revenge and injustice because there's no state in there to mediate problems like this. Even people who poisoned their land, they poisoned it not just for the cows, but for themselves because they can no longer plant on that farm. And then you have this whole spiral keeps going on and on when the flanik killed the people as revenge. The people also, the very group that attacked the flanis as well. And it goes on and on and on. So we have to have a mechanism for resolving injustice. For somebody who has been wronged, we need to be able to say, look, this is the person who wronged you. We will give you justice, we will give you compensation. I will punish the person who did that for you. Okay. So if we've been able to establish from our conversation that one of the challenges here where this farmer's health issue is food, these people are pastoralists and they have to move around for their head to eat, right? And one of the solutions is for them to be able to settle in a place such as a grazing reserves where their cattle have all they need to thrive. So how then do we convince states otherwise? Because right now they've banned upon grazing and they're saying, especially states like Benway, the Benway state governor is very vocal about this, saying there is no land for grazing reserves in their states. So how then can we begin to, convince states to work together with the federal government to establish as grazing reserves so these herders can cite their herds in one place and they don't have to move around? Well, yes. I mean, if you want to put, if you want to establish a grazing reserve in Benway, you're only playing it to the hands of opportunity politician in there because the Benway people are no cancel herds, culturally they're there. So anything, if you bring in a grazing reserve there, it almost feels like an imposition on them. And they put some always use that to rally people and say, look, we don't want this thing. So the obvious solution is that the grazing reserve should be mostly in the boat, at least the bulk of you. If you try and put the grazing reserve down south, maybe in Oyosti or something, you're going to run it to serious challenges. So this grazing reserve, I think that the solution should be that it should be in the north where people are, where the bulk of the cows are and where a lot of the herders come from. I think that's just a simple solution. You might have one or two, but then it has to be a voluntary acceptance if you're going to put it anywhere, anywhere else. And I think that the plans that the government currently has actually has the vast majority of those grazing reserves are to be in the north. So I think that would be a solution. Don't put a grazing reserve in Benway State. I mean, you're just going to create another political problem for yourself. And then put yourself to just take it as another football to be kicking about between themselves for another five years or something. Put the grazing reserves in the northern part of the country where most of the cows are and where a lot of the herders come from. And I think you will solve that problem. I mean, I don't think people are supposed to have to complain that they don't want a grazing reserve or in that far order or can be other places like that. Okay, so now despite these conversations, there will be minds of all the possible solutions beyond grazing routes. The president here said, this is something they're moving forward with. But like I mentioned earlier, the Senate is saying this is not a federal law. So if the government starts the process of making this grazing route, reviving them and making them lower, how do you think this will work out long term for the country? Well, then we have a political problem in that sense because there's only someone that the federal government can impose on states. Our constitution protects states. States have rights. Federal government has rights. States have their own rights as well. So, you know, you have to negotiate it. I mean, it just means that we're gonna waste a lot of time, you know, back and forth trying to do that. Whereby the states will, some states will reject it, some states will accept it. It's up to the government, however quickly they want to move, maybe create incentives and say, okay, you know what? If you give land, then we'll put a certain amount of funding and then we'll provide security and then we'll guarantee that some jobs will be created in that sense. So that probably is, it's gonna take a longer process, but you know, like I said, it's a political process. It will come with negotiation. Again, going back to the question of the United States, this is how it was done. Whereby, you know, the federal government and the states came to an arrangement where they eventually established ranching and grazing reserves in different states. So, you know, I guess it's a political problem. If the government is interested in solving it, they can start, even if you only have one or two states to start off with, start it and let that be an example. Again, you know, one of my favorite quotes about the federal system was from an American Supreme Court Justice who said that the beauty of the federal system is that it allows the states to be laboratories whereby one state can carry out an experiment without risking the rest of the country. So, a state can carry out an experiment. If it goes wrong, that failure is isolated in that one state. But if it goes right, other parts of the country can then compete and then the idea, a good idea can spread across the country. So, you know, if we can start off with just one state or two states, you know, start it up, if the idea is good, if it works, you know, if it is a proper solution, then you can spread it out across to the rest of the country. Faheem, thank you very much for your time this morning. Thanks for speaking with us. We wish you a beautiful day ahead. Thank you. All right. Stay with us, of course, moving away from grazing roots in Kato. Now we're going to be talking telecommunication workers who seem to be upset with their working conditions and are threatening a three-day warning strike. We're going to be getting into that right after the short break here on the breakfast.