Tracing old grazing reserves, routes in Nasarawa

The journey to the old grazing reserve in Keana began from the Department of Livestock and Veterinary Services of the Nasarawa State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Lafia, the state capital. Our reporter was provided with a document containing both the 1992 law establishing the reserve and a sketch of the location map, […]

The journey to the old grazing reserve in Keana began from the Department of Livestock and Veterinary Services of the Nasarawa State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Lafia, the state capital. Our reporter was provided with a document containing both the 1992 law establishing the reserve and a sketch of the location map, which leads the way to Lafia, Obi, Keana, Awe – southern part of the state. Nasarawa was, until October 1, 1996 when it was carved out as a state, a part of the old Plateau State. It was called Southern Plateau.
The document is a gazette of the old Plateau State government, containing the “Keana Grazing Reserve Law No. 3” in accordance with section 12 of the “Grazing Reserve Law N.N (Northern Nigeria) Law No. 4 of 1965.” It is dated May 17, 1992, same day the then governor, Mr. Fidelis Tapgun signed the law into effect in Jos.
Section 3 (1) of the state law defines the boundaries of the reserve with routes as right of way for the general public as follows: Keana-Agundu; Keana-Akwaya; Keana-Ndiagh; Keana-Agere; Keana-Shegbo; Keana-Abuni, and Keana-Aragwuga. Sub-sections (2), (3), and (4) of the law prohibits the establishment of settlements within the reserve, and farming within the perimeters of the reserve. The reserve, according to the schedule of the law, is measuring 17,000 square kilometres in size, and lies along the routes to Dedere on the North-West; Rufai and Azara on the North-East; Tunga on the East; Keana on the West; and Makurdi and Gbajima on the South-West.
The law, nevertheless, allows for “enclaves,” meaning villages or small settlements within the reserve, to co-exist with Fulani herdsmen. Dr. Aliyu Ramalan, a retired permanent secretary in the old Plateau State, who later served as commissioner of agriculture in the same state, told Daily Trust on Sunday that the project, which saw the creation of reserves in the state, encouraged the existence of these enclaves so that both the Fulani herdsmen and farmers can mutually co-exist and benefit from each other.
More documents opened to this reporter at the ministry show that Nasarawa has seven of these grazing fields, all established during the old Plateau days – two of them were still in proposal while five were demarcated, delineated and sketched for development. Records obtained from the Department of Livestock and Veterinary Services show that the state inherited two developed reserves from the old Plateau after state creation in 1996. The two reserves: Awe and Keana, were established in 1979 by a World Bank intervention programme called Lafia Agricultural Development Project (LADP), which ran from 1979 to 1983. But they were fully recognised by state law with the then Governor Fidelis Tapgun’s signature on May 17, 1992. 
The other three are Doma, Wamba, and Kurudu, all established with the loan from the World Bank.
No government official agreed to speak officially to Daily Trust on Sunday because of long beaurocracy, but the document made available to our reporter in confidence showed that in Awe, two earth dams and a ring well were constructed near Baure at one end of the reserve, while another earth dam was constructed near Anfana at the other end.
“Some access roads were constructed across the reserve while a veterinary clinic was built at Awe,” the document stated, adding that the Awe reserve was gazetted in 1992 by the then Fidelis Tapgun administration in the old Plateau State.
The LADP intervention constructed a dam near Gidan Ogere and a ring well near the western end of the Keana reserve. A veterinary clinic was built near the edge of the reserve, according to the document, which stated that the reserve was also gazetted alongside that of Awe in 1992.
Between 1997 and 2000, the Petroleum Trust Fund’s (PTF) Pastoralist Development Programme (PDP) intervention under the then head of state, General Sani Abacha, undertook to rehabilitate the reserves and stock the old routes. The programme also initiated services to enhance the availability of veterinary services and drugs to reduce mortality and increase livestock production, as well as minimise grazers/crop farmers’ clashes over land.
In 1997, about 700 kilometres of stock routes – 65.7 for Awe, and 84.25 for Keana, were traced and gazetted by the PTF. “The actual infrastructural development in the reserves did not take place until when the PTF programme was disbanded in October 2000 by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo administration,” part of the document stated.
In 2000, another intervention programme, the National Livestock Project Division (NLPD), set in to develop the reserves after the disbandment of the PTF. The NLPD picked up some work in Awe and arranged to complete the development plan on the reserve. The state and Awe Local Government Council contributed funds to pay up a counterpart fund of N150 million and N75 million, respectively, for a development plan, which report was submitted in 2005, according to the ministry’s records.
Between July 2007 and July 2008, the federal government executed a number or projects in its implementation of the report. These are the provision of three boreholes in Doma, one each in Awe, Keana and Wamba, and three others in Kurudu. Requests from the state government were made of the NLPD to provide more facilities to the reserves, but nothing so far has come the way of the reserves since then. Rather, all the previous provisions made in the reserves are now dysfunctional. The boreholes have all stopped working, as the dam in Keana has silted up. The veterinary clinics have now become sick themselves and are now being taken up by either development or farming because of the activities of land poachers, forcing nomads to look elsewhere, including cultivated farms to feed their cattle.
Tracing the old cattle routes
Each of the five reserves is linked by the old cattle routes. According to Dr. Ramalan, the old beaurocrat who superintended the creation of the five reserves in the old Plateau while serving as a young veterinary doctor in the World Bank-assisted programme, cattle routes are traced to the pre-colonial period. 
“Cattle routes predate the colonial era. They were called trade cattle routes, and they ran from Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and into Nigeria. These were traditional routes of migrants. The colonial administration adopted them, with laws defining these routes, demarcated. In the days of the Northern Region, it was the responsibility of the Ministry of Animals and Forest Resources to clear them to make sure there was no interference.
“In the then World Bank-assisted programme, we were responsible for the management of certain cattle routes, including the one from Yelwa in Shendam in the present day Plateau, down to Asakio and Lafia in the present day Lafia in Nasarawa State. It is the same route that led to what is today Lafia Cattle Market. We were also responsible for the route from Yelwa, to Kwande in today’s Plateau, and westward to Azara, Awe, and Keana in the present day Nasarawa, and then to Gbajimba and Makurdi in Benue State,” Dr. Ramalan had said.
Investigation by Daily Trust on Sunday revealed that the route linking the Keana reserve can be traced from Bauchi State, through Plateau, with beacons erected during the implementation of the intervention by the defunct PTF’s Pastoralist Development Programme.
The beacons, which are very large in size, are erected in pairs and standing between 15 and 20 feet away from each other to allow for a corridor for the passage of cattle.
“The corridor is to allow the cattle the right of way and prohibit any form of development and farming along the routes so that grazers can link the reserve from various parts of the country without entering cultivated farms,” Ibrahim Haruna, a field officer of the Department of Livestock and Veterinary Services explained to our reporter.
Conducting Daily Trust on Sunday round, Haruna stopped at various points to trace the routes, using the beacons. Our reporter was compelled to trek distances into the forest to trace the beacons, many of which have now been taken over by large farms or settlements.
At the gateway to Obi, the headquarters of Obi Local Government Area, the expansion of the town has developed deep into the route, completely taking it over and compelling herdsmen to use any available space to reach the reserve.
A herder at that point helped this reporter to trace the beacons, but said, “The route has been taken over by houses.” He said the village head in the area constructed his house along the route, with two beacons standing behind the residence.
Residents at the place did not respond to media inquiries. They, however, insisted that local government authorities slam heavy taxes to allow people build along the route. 
But council officials denied the allegation, saying that developers should answer to the illegality of their actions on the route.
Along another route traced by our reporter during the visit, beacons could not be identified by our guide, Mr. Haruna of the Livestock and Veterinary Services. This is the route from Yelwa in Shendam in the present day Plateau, down to Asakio, to Lafia in the present day Nasarawa State. This route, which goes through a forest reserve at the outskirts of Lafia, has been taken over by the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) FM station, called Precious FM at Akurba, along the Lafia-Shendam road.
Not far from the radio house is the complex of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly (NSHA), which project was awarded for execution in 2009, by the then Governor Aliyu Akwwe Doma. This complex, covering a landmass as large as half of a reserve, swallowed up the route, terminating the right of way of cattle to the Lafia Cattle Market. All other activities of construction, some of them by federal establishments, including a Federal High Court complex in the ever expanding Lafia metropolis, adds up to blocking the route completely.
Tracing the Keana reserve
Very few persons, including the personnel of the Department of Agriculture at the local government secretariat in Keana, are aware that a little outside the council headquarters, along an unpaved Keana-Abuni-Awe road, lies the old reserve. Daily Trust on Sunday was on this reserve on a full day’s visit and linked all the borders.
The sketch map, drawn by a team of surveyors who worked with the livestock adviser appointed on the World Bank-assisted programme, traces many paths to the reserve, from its many borders. But the dirt road to Abuni, from the metropolis of Keana, west of the reserve, is the easiest link. Our reporter took this road, leaving behind some government establishments, including the state-owned Government Secondary School (GSS), which borders the reserve.
At the entrance to the reserve stands a hand-pump borehole provided by Senator Suleiman Adokwe during the electioneering campaign in 2015. No fewer than 30 extremely shy Fulani women and their children crowded up at the provision, which serves all of the Ruga (Fulani settlement) on the reserve, as well as the enclaves within it. The first of the Fulani settlement to enter from this route is headed by the Ardo (chief) of all the Fulani on the reserve, Ardo Zakari Yau Saidu, a septuagenarian who is also the first settler there.
Ardo Zakari, as he is known all through Keana, brags about his knowledge of the reserve. He married his second, third, fourth and the subsequent wives on this reserve, having arrived there some 35 years ago.
“All other Fulani herdsmen met me here. I know every stream and forest here, and the boundaries of the reserve as I know all my children and their mothers,” Ardo Zakari said. He has the record of all the Fulani herdsmen who have settled there, some of who have relocated.
He recalled the early days of the reserve when government officials of the old Plateau used to visit regularly in an effort to plant improved species of grass and bring other developmental projects, including the dam.
“The grass was planted in my presence. My children used to abandon the cattle on the field to go sight-seeing on the construction of the dam. I whipped the oldest among them a couple of times,” he said.
The Fulani leader said he was disappointed that the same government, which took loan to establish the reserve, would abandon the project.
Recalling how the project was abandoned he said, “We woke up one day to see government officials who visited to announce that soldiers would come to take up the reserve. They said the federal government was going to set up an air force bombing range.”
Daily Trust on Sunday recalls that Dr. Ramalan had said in 2013 that the federal government directed his office to hands off the reserve, saying it would be converted into an air force bombing range. “This directive came personally from the military governor of the then Plateau State, the late Col. Joshua Umoru Anaja. I remember it was in 1983, during the Buhari regime. We were directed in writing. I am sure you will get that either in the Lafia agricultural programme file or somewhere in the ministry. A letter was given to us, signed by the then military governor to hands off that area. We did that and left.”
The septuagenarian called on the government to reconsider the development of the reserve, recalling that 35 years on, about 15 Fulani settlements have not grazed beyond their boundaries, except those who decided to relocate.
“No one can say that we have had crises with farmers. Although we have recorded cases of encroachment, we still manage our relationship with the farmers and developers. No farmer has ever come up with complaints that their crops have been eaten up by our cattle. This is because we have restricted grazing within the limits of the reserves,” he said.
At the only government facility within the establishment, a primary school run by the Local Government Education Authority (LEA), our reporter saw a single block of three tiny classrooms established about 11 years ago. The building is not plastered and there is no ceiling on it. Also, there is neither an office for teachers nor a toilet.
Few pupils are registered in the school; just as the four teachers recruited for them hardly show up for classes as there is hardly any supervision from the education office of the council.
“The rate at which pupils drop out of school is high here,” a mother who simply gave her name as Hauwa said. She did not answer the question on whether her children are in school.
Going through forests, streams and hills, our reporter saw many settlements (ruga) spread along the way to the middle of the reserve. A dam provided through a World Bank loan is closing up, just as it has eroded at the southern end after decades of non-maintenance. In 2013 when Daily Trust on Sunday first visited the dam, Ardo Ahmadu Muhammadu, one of the Fulani elders, cried out that successive governments, including the present administration headed by Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, overlooked the project.
Like Ardo Ahmadu, Ardo Alhaji Yaro Mainasarawa, who oversees Rugan Alhaji Yaro, some distance away from Rugan Ahmadu, said herdsmen had been slammed with taxes by the same government which does not care about their need.
“We are gradually facing a situation where we will not have any place for our cattle to graze. This is because the reserve has been eaten up by encroachment,” Ardo Alhaji Yaro said, adding that government does not provide veterinary services for their cattle.