Headline

Open Grazing Ban: Wike Faces Hurdles In FCT As Miyetti Allah Talks Tough

Published

2 years ago

October 7, 2023

As part of his avowed commitment to restore the status of Abuja as the Federal Capital Territory, the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, recently announced an end to open-grazing of cattle.

There have been several efforts in the past to reposition Abuja and put it on the world map.

Difficult to contend with is the bad odour and the ugly sight of dung from animals, dropped at every corner of the city which attract flies, putting residents at risk of contracting diseases.

The dangers attached to open and unrestricted grazing, not only in the Federal Capital Territory, cannot be overemphasised.

DAILY POST reports that a former Chairman, Senate Committee on FCT, Dino Melaye, had vowed to end the movement of animals in the FCT and had once directed the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Alhaji Mohammed Bello, to slaughter cows found in the city centre.

Melaye had noted that the herdsmen have continued to move their cattle in the Abuja metropolis despite several warnings to their owners by the authorities.

“Honourable Minister, the Senate as an institution is not happy at how Fulani herdsmen continue to move their cows across the city centre, which we are aware you have given directive against some time ago.

“From now, get knives and ask your men to slaughter cows found in the capital city or prosecute herdsmen seen with cows in the city centre with a fine of N50, 000 per cow. This order must be carried out,” Melaye said.

However, whatever effort the former Kogi Senator and others put to end open grazing in the FCT did not come to fruition.

But Wike has now taken the gauntlet.

Few hours after his swearing in, he declared, “I will step on toes, the big and mighty; I will step on your toes if you are doing something wrong,” insisting that herders can move their cattle outside the city but would no longer be allowed to graze on the grasses used for the beautification of the city.

Now the question is, how does the Minister intend to drive the herdsmen out of the city centre without putting in place measures that would ensure they continue doing their business and earning their livelihood as legitimate citizens.

And experts suggest that it would create a similar situation to the ban on Okada, street hawking, and demolishing of shops in Abuja without providing alternative measures to the affected people.

It could also be compared to the removal of fuel subsidies without proper consultations and preparation to cushion the effect.

A concerned citizen remarked that stopping herdsmen from moving their cows around the FCT could be a herculean task for the new FCT Administration and so, it requires that serious planning and proper consultation with the appropriate stakeholders are made.

The Minister was rather more subtle when he talked about the issues last weekend.

Wike said, “We will consult with the herdsmen to see how we will stop [open grazing] because we cannot allow cows inside the city.

“They can be outside the city because the grasses are outside the city. The grass in the city was planted to beautify the city. It is not that one that they would eat. so, we will discuss…”

Speaking with DAILY POST, the National President of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Baba Othman Ngelzarma, said they are looking forward to meeting the FCT Minister in order to table before him some of their challenges, which among them are the large dysfunctional grazing reserves.

“The minister has said that he would invite the cattle owners before making a decision. That he would not do something that someone will come out to say they were not contacted.

“So this is the situation that we always want. We know Abuja is a city and cows are not supposed to move around or roam about the city. It’s very embarrassing. We are all civilised people.

“Even during the era of the former Minister, we had a series of discussions on this. We had an agreement that no cows should move in the central city area. But in the periphery, in the sahel they can move because all the grazing reserves they have have been taken over from them by the farmers.

“We have grazing reserves in Abuja here that have been taken over by farmers. So we need someone of Wike’s disposition to come and settle this once and for all.

“We have about four grazing reserves around Abuja here but they require development, they require other things in them before you stop these guys from moving around.

“Because the whole of Abuja is a grazing reserve that was taken over by the Federal Capital. But this does not mean they have the right to move because it is Federal Capital Territory and the pride of every Nigerian; it is so embarrassing in the central city area.

“This is the agreement we have with the former Minister. But they can go around in the rural areas because the grazing reserves are not developed and there’s no pasture in it and farmers are gradually encroaching on them.

“This is why we want to have interaction with Wike himself because we know he is a gentle man and that he understands the dynamics and that this will give us the opportunity for the grazing reserves to be developed.

“And we know Wike will develop them. He will recollect our grazing lands and develop them. We are yearning to interact with him. We want to have a discussion with him on how we can seek out these problems. It’s very wrong for cows to roam in the city, we know.

“But mind you, not all the cows roaming the city belong to the local pastoralists. Some of these cows are owned by big men in the city who are employing the pastoralists to graze for them but that’s notwithstanding, whatever it is, cows are not supposed to roam in the central city area.

“But because the grazing reserves are not developed we have to consider the pastoralists too. There are places reserved for them to graze their cows but those places are not developed.

“No water, grazes or any form of infrastructure. They deserve to be developed for the interest of pastoralists and for the sake of justice and fairness.

‘We know Wike. He is the one to do this job for us because he’s the aggressive type and with his disposition, he’ll return and develop our grazing land for us. Whenever he invites us, we’re ready to come and meet him and sort out this problem once and for all,” he declared.

However, a sister organisation to MACBAN, the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, has a slightly different view about the movement of cows in the FCT or any other city in the country.

The National Secretary of the body, Saleh Alhassan Kubah, who spoke to our correspondent, said nobody can drive the cows away or stop them from grazing anywhere in the north.

According to him, the former Rivers State Governor should rather focus on how to develop the city of Abuja instead of talking about cows.

He said that until the government is able to make available grazing areas for cattle, it would be a futile move to uproot herders from the FCT, adding that most of the cows seen around Abuja belong to the city elites.

“Where is the grazing land in Abuja? Is it inside the building they will graze? The thing is, Wike is not consequential. We have seen Ortom come and go.

“So we don’t want to engage Wike, who has to take ‘Ogogoro’ [Alcoholic drink] before he goes to the office every morning.

“You’ve not heard it before? He said it himself. Let him deliver services in the FCT. We are waiting to see the good works he will do. You know he’s working for our party, so I can’t criticise him.

“He’s our minister. So I don’t want to start fighting our minister. It’s not consequential because there’s no grazing area in Abuja.

“All those cattle you see there belong to the elite there, so he’ll find a way for them. Wike doesn’t merit our responses. Let him deal with the massive abandoned buildings.

“Let him collect tax from all those houses nobody is occupying. Let him develop the city. Let him take care of the indigenous people that have been neglected, the Gwari people.

“He’s from Port Harcourt, an Ikwerre man. He knows how they behave in Port Harcourt. If the Gwari people give him 10 percent of how Ikwerre people behave in Port Harcourt, he will know how to deal with them. Let him develop the rural areas, the satellite towns and give them amenities. Power is transient.

“No matter how it is, he will leave very soon. We can’t engage him. He can’t get new information from us. He’s an attention seeker. Is there any grazing land around the Villa?

“Or, is it the sight of cows that people don’t want to see? Are cows not the beauty of the Northern geography? You want to eat cows but you don’t want to see them, is it not contradictory?

“If there are no cows in the northern geography what you will be seeing is a crisis caused by the spirits of the land. The land won’t be stable [because the cows need to move for the spirits to be happy]. It is their environment.

“He can’t chase the cows away. Who will chase the cows away in the northern territory? Nobody can chase them. We’re going nowhere.

“Let him revoke the lands in the FCT, why is giving them more time? I thought he would just revoke them at once.

“In the Abuja development plan, there’s no grazing area in the FCT or AMAC area council…

“Let him handle the issues of insecurity in Abuja. We’re not and will never be his problem.”

And in an interview with DAILY POST, the Director, Animal Husbandry Services in the Agricultural and Rural Development, FCT, Hajiya Umma Abubakar, outlined the plans already in place to settle the herders in comfortable zones.

According to her, the establishment of the Grazing Reserves is not only aimed at resettling the Fulani pastoralists but to provide the enabling environment for them to engage in livestock activities that are comparable to the best anywhere in the world.

According to her, plans are already in place to not only develop the four grazing reserves in Abuja, but turn them into economic hubs for both the herders and their communities.

She said that the Minister of the FCT and the Minister of State for the FCT are all very much interested in settlement of herders in the nation’s capital city.

She explained that, “To address the issues of compensation and bringing an end to the incessant clashes between the Fulani and the local communities, the Secretariat embarked on a comprehensive enumeration exercise to identify the genuine inhabitants that will be compensated to ensure that no member of the community is left out.

“The plan of the FCT Administration in development of the grazing reserves will no doubt be complimented by the Special Agricultural Processing Zone (SAPZ) Project which the Africa Development Bank (AfDB & the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) are co-funding.

“I can assure you that the SAPZ Project is going to address the issue of open grazing because one of its components which is called Agriculture Transformation Centres (ATC) focuses on building the capacities of all the groups in different aspect of the Livestock value chains, such as production of quality feeds, milk processing etc.

“Water will also be provided at the centres to ensure that they are able to conveniently fatten their animals without them moving outside the reserves.”

Speaking on how the government intends to identify and differentiate between indigenous herders from migrant herders, especially those from outside the country, she added that, “The profiling that we are conducting on a regular basis is to help us to identify new and old Fulani herdsmen.

“We are working with security agencies, as well as the communities who know those that are engaged in genuine activities without constituting any form of threat to the society.”

On the issue of continued resistance from some host communities who are against the establishment of the grazing reserves, the director said, “We are working closely with the host communities on the need for peaceful co-existence.

“We equally have been engaging the groups to sensitise them on what they all stand to benefit from the development of the reserves.

“Livestock activities do not only involve the Fulani. Even the crop farmers can engage in numerous production activities such as livestock feed while they can equally benefit from the byproducts of the cattle as manures.

“The plan by the Honourable Minister of the FCT to meet with all the stakeholders will give an impetus to achieving the desired objective.

“In the same vein, the minister of State for FCT has assured that she will provide the necessary support in making sure that the development plans for the four grazing reserves in Abuja are implemented and improved upon.”

DAILY POST

Headline

Thousands Reported To Have Fled DR Congo Fighting As M23 Closes On Key City

Published

8 hours ago

December 9, 2025

Editor

Fierce fighting rocked the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday as the Rwanda-backed M23 militia rapidly advanced towards the strategic city of Uvira, with tens of thousands of people fleeing over the nearby border into Burundi, sources said.

The armed group and its Rwandan allies were just a few kilometres (miles) north of Uvira, security and military sources told AFP.

The renewed violence undermined a peace agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump that Kinshasa and Kigali signed less than a week ago, on December 4.

Trump had boasted that the Rwanda-DRC conflict was one of eight he has ended since returning to power in America in January.

With the new fighting, more than 30,000 people have fled the area around Uvira for Burundi in the space of a week, a UN source and a Burundian administrative source told AFP.

The Burundian source told AFP on condition of anonymity he had recorded more than 8,000 daily arrivals over the past two days, and 30,000 arrivals in one week. A source in the UN refugee agency confirmed the figure.

The Rwanda-backed M23 offensive comes nearly a year after the group seized control of Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in eastern DRC, a strategic region rich in natural resources and plagued by conflict for 30 years.

Local people described a state of growing panic as bombardments struck the hills above Uvira, a city of several hundred thousand residents.

“Three bombs have just exploded in the hills. It’s every man for himself,” said one resident reached by telephone.

“We are all under the beds in Uvira — that’s the reality,” another resident said, while a representative of civil society who would not give their name described fighting on the city’s outskirts.

Fighting was also reported in Runingo, another small locality some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Uvira, as the M23 and the Rwandan army closed in.

Burundi views the prospect of Uvira falling to Rwanda-backed forces as an existential threat, given that it sits across Lake Tanganyika from Burundi’s economic capital Bujumbura.

The city is the main sizeable locality in the area yet to fall to the M23 and its capture would essentially cut off the zone from DRC control.

Burundi deployed about 10,000 soldiers to eastern DRC in October 2023 as part of a military cooperation agreement, and security sources say reinforcements have since taken that presence to around 18,000 men.

The M23 and Rwandan forces launched their Uvira offensive on December 1.

Rich in natural resources, eastern DRC has been choked by successive conflicts for around three decades.

Violence in the region intensified early this year when M23 fighters seized the key eastern city of Goma in January, followed by Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province, a few weeks later.

– Regional risk –

The peace deal meant to quell the fighting was signed last Thursday in Washington by Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame, with Trump — who called it a “miracle” deal — also putting his signature to it.

The agreement includes an economic component intended to secure US supplies of critical minerals present in the region, as America seeks to challenge China’s dominance in the sector.

But even on the day of the signing, intense fighting took place in South Kivu, where Uvira is located, which included the bombing of houses and schools.

Witnesses and military sources in Uvira said that Congolese soldiers fleeing the fighting had arrived in the city overnight Monday and shops were looted at dawn.

Several hundred Congolese and Burundian soldiers had already fled to Burundi on Monday, according to military sources, since the M23 fighters embarked on their latest offensive from Kamanyola, some 70 kilometres north of Uvira.
Since the M23’s lightning offensive early this year, the front had largely stabilised over the past nine months.

Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye warned in February there was a danger of the conflict escalating into a broader regional war, a fear echoed by the United Nations.

Headline

‘Santa Claus’ Arrested For Possessing, Distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material

Published

8 hours ago

December 9, 2025

Editor

A 64-year-old man from Hamilton Township has been arrested in the United States after investigators linked him to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material.

The suspect, identified as Mark Paulino, had been working as a “Santa for hire” at holiday events, a role that placed him in repeated contact with children.

Mercer County officials said the investigation began on 4 December when detectives were alerted to suspicious online activity involving the uploading of child pornography from a residence in Hamilton Township. The probe quickly identified Paulino, a retired elementary school teacher, as the person involved.

Police stated that Paulino had presented himself online as a retired teacher and had recently performed as Santa Claus for photographs and private, corporate, and organisational events. “Because this role involved direct, repeated contact with children, detectives worked around the clock to secure a search warrant,” authorities explained.

The warrant was executed on 5 December, during which police seized multiple items regarded as evidentiary. Paulino was taken into custody without incident and charged with possession and distribution of child sexual abuse materials, as well as endangering the welfare of a child.

Prosecutors have filed a motion to detain him pending trial. The investigation remains ongoing, and authorities have urged members of the public with relevant information to come forward.

Headline

Why West African Troops Overturned Benin’s Coup But Watched Others Pass

Published

8 hours ago

December 9, 2025

Editor

When Benin’s government over the weekend fought back a coup attempt, they had unlikely help: troops and air strikes from neighbouring countries.

West Africa has seen a series of coups over the past five years, leaving critics to cast the regional political bloc ECOWAS as having little more than stern communiques at its disposal to stop them.

But in Benin, Nigerian jets and troops were quickly dispatched to help their smaller neighbour foil the putsch attempt, while the Economic Community of West African States promised more were on their way, from Ghana, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.

Multiple factors were at play, analysts, diplomats and government officials told AFP, from the critical period where President Patrice Talon remained in partial control of his country and loyal army forces to the high economic and political stakes — especially for regional power Nigeria — of a country like Benin falling under a junta.

Perhaps most important was the fact that Talon was not taken prisoner as the soldiers declared their takeover, and was able to call on Nigeria — and presumably ECOWAS directly — for assistance.

The Nigerian presidency said that Benin’s foreign ministry requested air support.

A source within ECOWAS told AFP meanwhile that regional leaders, including the presidents of Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone decided “to stand firm and not repeat their error in Niger”.

The toppling of the civilian government in Niamey in 2023 sparked sanctions and threats of military intervention.

The isolation — and empty threats — potentially exacerbated the situation: the junta not only remains in place but left ECOWAS and formed the Alliance of Sahel States with fellow breakaway nations Burkina Faso and Mali, also under military control.

– Nigerian security, economic links –

While pushing back on the coup offered an opening for Nigeria to regain a bit of its lost diplomatic shine of decades past, when it was a regional and continental heavyweight, there were also tangible economic and security reasons to intervene, analysts said.

“Unrest in Benin poses a direct risk to Nigeria’s economic and security priorities,” motivating a “fast Nigerian-fronted ECOWAS reaction,” Usman Ibrahim, a Nigerian security analyst at SARI Global, told AFP.

A former west African government minister said that the ECOWAS intervention heavily “depended on Nigeria’s willingness.”

Benin, like Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, is battling jihadist insurgents in its north.

In October, jihadists from the Al-Qaeda affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) claimed their first attack in Nigeria last month, appearing to have crossed from the Beninese border.

“If the military takes over and mismanages the security situation… it’s a front in western Nigeria that the Tinubu administration has to address at a time when the international spotlight is obviously on Nigeria’s national security predicament,” said Ryan Cummings, director of Signal Risk, referencing a recent US diplomatic offensive against Nigeria over the handling of its own myriad conflicts.

Analysts also pointed out that Nigeria’s apparent lead in shoring up the pro-western civilian government of Benin, a former French colony, comes at a time when Abuja and Paris are increasing security ties.

“Troops were mobilised rapidly and Paris decided to support the operation,” the ECOWAS source said.

At the request of the Beninese authorities, France provided “in terms of surveillance, observation and logistical” assistance to the Benin armed force, an aide to President Emmanuel Macron told reporters Tuesday.

– Breakaway juntas –

Another likely worry was whether the putschists in Benin would join the AES, who maintain uneasy relations with their neighbours, said Nnamdi Obasi, senior Nigeria adviser at International Crisis Group.

But while some within and outside ECOWAS have painted the response to the coup in Benin as a turning point for ECOWAS, others aren’t convinced.

Critics often point out that ECOWAS does little when civilian presidents cement their rule without military means — extending term limits, altering the constitution to stay in power or cracking down on dissent.

Just last month, a coup in Guinea Bissau attracted the typical diplomatic-only playbook of harsh statements and communiques.

Guinea Bissau has fallen under military rule five times, and the latest putsch is suspected to have been ordered by the president himself — a “tough situation to handle”, noted Confidence MacHarry of SBM Intelligence.

Benin also commands a certain “prestige” as a “stable democracy in West Africa”, said analyst Ibrahim.

“The reaction to events in Benin does not firmly establish a novel or uniform protocol for ECOWAS,” Ibrahim said. “Rather, it underscores the continued selective and politically calculated nature of its engagements.”
(AFP)