The Tiv Professionals Group is a non-partisan assembly of academics, legal experts, engineers, economists, medical doctors, and development specialists. We proceed from the conviction that governance must be ordered by reason rather than convenience and by justice rather than expediency.
Having considered the Federal Government’s renewed proposal of ranching as an instrument of national security and food security and its designation of Benue and other four states and the FCT as pilot locations, we affirm that the purpose of government—to secure life, liberty, and the common good—cannot be realized through means that violate constitutional order, disregard historical truth, or sever the relationship between a people and their land.
This position is shared across the Middle Belt. The Middle Belt Forum and the Middle Belt Elder’s Council have rejected the renewed cattle ranching consensus policy as a disguised agenda of land appropriation.
Major socio-cultural groups in Benue (and other targeted states) and the Forum of Ayatutu Professors have also rejected the proposed policy. The convergence reflects a regional consensus on the fact that development must not become dispossession.
Three realities ground our judgment. First, the incessant armed Fulani attacks on Benue (and other Middle Belt States) since 2011 have produced mass death, mass displacement, and the ruin of livelihoods, with civil society documenting upwards of six thousand fatalities. Second, open grazing is economically inefficient, environmentally destructive, and a persistent source of insecurity. Third, ranching as practiced elsewhere is a rational and humane mode of animal husbandry. From these premises our position follows:
we are not opposed to ranching in principle. Our objection is to ranching imposed without law, without justice, and without consent.
On sovereignty, the 1999 Constitution and the Land Use Act vest land in the Governor in trust for the people. The Federal Government therefore possesses no authority to unilaterally select or allocate land in Benue or any other state for that matter. Any legitimate policy must proceed on the basis of a willing seller and willing buyer, with the state and host communities as primary arbiters.
On law, Benue has already legislated. The Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law of 2017 prohibit open grazing, mandates ranching through licensing, and prescribes penalties for contravention. To designate Benue anew without funding and enforcing this statute is to duplicate effort, disregard subnational institutions, and reward Fulani intransigence.
The 2017 Law is non-negotiable because it is already the compromise. It was not enacted in anger but as a structured pathway to modern livestock production through private investment and state oversight. To abandon it for a federal pilot is to abandon Benue’s solution for that of the Caliphate. Any policy that does not begin and end within that law is unacceptable to the Benue position. Nasarawa does not have a ranching law like Benue, but it has since ceased to be a Caliphate project so it choice as a pilot location must also be in alignment with the constitution and the Land Use Act.
On justice, there can be no ranching without restitution. With over two million internally displaced persons in the two states and more than thirty communities under occupation, any ranching architecture that does not first secure return, reconstruction, and accountability functions not as policy but as expropriation.
The 2017 Benue Law cannot be implemented on occupied land or while our people are in IDP camps. Fidelity to its letter and spirit therefore requires three prior conditions: security and return, such that no ranching is discussed in any LGA until displaced persons are resettled; land integrity, such that no land is designated without verification and community consent under the Land Use Act; and accountability, demonstrated through the prosecution of violent actors as proof that the state retains a monopoly of force.
Justice must precede infrastructure. These conditions also apply to Nasarawa.
On political economy, prior federal interventions such as RUGA failed because they conflated private enterprise with public subsidy. Ranching remains a private business.
The role of government is to provide regulation, and security, not to own land or operate ranches. Support must flow to individuals, cooperatives, and communities through the Bank of Agriculture, Bank of Industry, and the Central Bank, such that Benue and Nasarawa youth, women, and host communities become proprietors rather than labourers.
If the Federal Government proceeds in good faith, Benue can even model a national pathway, but only on principle. That model requires full adherence to the 2017 Law as the sole legal framework; ranch ownership vesting a minimum of seventy percent equity in Benue indigenes and host communities, for anything less invites dispossession. It further requires a published federal white paper with a binding timeline for return to ancestral homesteads across all twenty-three LGAs prior to any ranch project and the establishment of a jointly governed Benue Victims Trust Fund for reparative reconstruction. Same applies for Nasarawa State.
For the Federal Government to propose this policy after engaging 34 pastoral groups and their leaders with the Sultan of Sokoto is not only very rude but disrespectful to the people of Benue and Nasarawa states. Gone are the days the leadership of the Sokoto Caliphate would sit and decide what will happen in Benue and Nasarawa States as well as the Middle Belt.
Benue and Nasarawa states are not anti-ranching. They are pro-law, pro-consultation, and pro-justice.
The constitution and extant laws provide the legal vehicle.
The people of Benue and Nasarawa states are not adversaries of development. We are adversaries of injustice. A unilateral federal imposition that ignores history, law, and communal ownership will replicate failure, deepen mistrust, and worsen insecurity. Should the Federal Government choose partnership over imposition, place justice at the center, and support a private-sector value-chain model, then Benue and Nasarawa can become the center of humane and profitable livestock production.
Therefore, we declare: we choose productive ranches over political and Fulani ranches, justice over convenience, and peace founded on fairness over peace predicated on conquest.
Zacharys Anger Gundu,
For: TPG
National Executive Council
