Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Privatisation, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi ( APC Kebbi North), spoke on the power sector and other issues in the polity in a recent interview with select journalists. TAIYE ODEWALE was there. Excerpts:
You are the Vice Chairman of the Privatisation Committee of the Senate. Nigerians are urging President Buhari to revoke the privatisation of the power sector due to the poor performance of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). What is your take on this?
Well, before talking about the merits or demerits of what has happened, it is better for us to get the background of what happened in the power sector. First of all, I don’t want to preempt the report of the joint Committee which has been set up by the Senate to look into the circumstances that led to the Privatisation exercise and report back to the Senate, to find out the ways and means of those things that have been affecting the power sector without any prejudice to the outcome of the joint Committee, under the leadership of Senator James Manager, who is the Chairman of the Committee on Power with Privatisation Committee.
Very soon there will be public hearing on that. But without preempting the outcome, we have to know what happened; every Nigerian knows about the problems in the power sector over the years and the lack of investment that happened in that sector for a long time. It has given so many governments a lot of headache, but since the coming of this democratic dispensation from 1999 till date, records have it that various governments since Obasanjo tried to find out some ways and means of doing that.
The Obasanjo’s government came up with the Integrated National Power Projects (IPP), with a combination of little resources from the federal government and state governments with their own consent so that these Independent Power Plants can be established, and many of them have been established.
But when they established the provision for gas because most of them are gas based plants, it didn’t work out. It was only recently that the gas issue was being resolved for many of them. And hitherto, they are plants to develop the hydro-power projects so that we can generate a least enough electricity.
The transmission network has been very backward; not much has been done, so that even if you produce the power, what are you going to do to evacuate it. The network that is servicing the country is the one established during the Gowon, Murtala, Obasanjo/ Yar’Adua regimes, which is 20 to 30 years old.
Then the distribution network itself in most of Nigerian communities is also about 40 years old. So, government decided to intervene in the power sector because of these problems and lack of investment.
You know that power is the most vital means of bringing industrialization in any community. So, we had this challenge. Now what are the approaches that the various governments have followed? Since government came to focus on the sector since Obasanjo regime, the government made the reform which moved the management of power resources from National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) so that you can break down the company into several sub companies.
What do you think is the way forward on the issue of herdsmen attacks on Nigerian communities and possible reprisal attacks?
You see, the problem is for people to understand this situation from two fundamental points of views. The first one is that the Nigerian society has developed over a period of time in ways that the population has increased of all Nigerian ethnic groups but the land area of the country has remained the same. In fact, one can even say that the land area has decreased because some areas have been ceded to Cameroon under Obasanjo.
This conflict between the herdsmen whether they are Fulanis or not is another matter, but the conflict has been there even before the colonists came.
So, let’s deal with this issue; the issue of human life involved, and the issue of livestock industry. When you go to the early colonial reports, one of the the early problems the British government in Nigeria faced when they conquered this country and established its rulership was conflict over grazing rights between farmers and herdsmen.
Now, herdsmen can be of different tribes; it ís not only the Fulanis that are herdsmen, let me be clear about that. In my area, you have herdsmen, some whom are not Fulanis, they belong to a different ethnic group.
There are some Sudanese Fulanis and they are not even dealing with cattle. They rear sheep and goats instead. As the livestock industry is developing, there are so many other tribes, ethnicities who are into cattle rearing. If you go to Borno, Yobe and other places, there are a lot of other herdsmen who are not Fulanis. So, livestock farming is not a tribal occupation.
It is the deforestation and desertification in the northern part of the country that has moved the livestock of the nation to the north-central and the southern part of the nation because there is no grass in the far north for them to stay.
So, before the colonial rule, a lot of the conflicts were happening between the herdsmen and Hausa and other northern farmers. When you look at the colonial achieves, you will see a lot of reports on this. That was what informed the creation of cattle routes and grazing reserves. So, cattle routes and grazing reserves were creations of colonial policy in order to settle the kind of conflict they faced at that time.
So, the question we should ask is, how do we develop the national livestock industry while preserving the peace and security of the nation.
Whatever these people are, whether they are Fulani or other ethnic stock, at least they are Nigerians. Now, if you say that every time crisis happens, you expel the people, that means what you are saying is that they should take out that particular occupational group. If you expel them, where do they go; so, you are not really getting to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is to really look at the security aspect; work out a system where you secure all the communities, get rid of all the criminals and let them know that they are not supposed to carry guns in this country if you are not licenced by the police.
Some people are advocating for grazing reserves while others are suggesting that ranches be established as a means of curbing the constant herdsmen/ farmers clashes in the country. What is your position on the matter?
There are a lot of issues there. The most important thing is to have an understanding of the Nigerian livestock industry itself. There are different ways the industry has developed over the years. There are some large scale farmers who have developed some places and who have kept some ranches along their farms. There are some people who are keeping a lot of cows in their houses; early in the morning the cows will go out, and after feeding come back to the house. They are the roving ones.
There are others who hold small quantity such as five, six, etc cows both in urban and semi urban setting. Again, we have to look at the livestock development industry and look at the species that you require so that you can raise both the level of the stock because some of them are so traditional and backward because of their genetic make up that you can only get two liters of milk from them. But if you do cattle improvement which was started in this country long time ago in this country, you can get about ten liters out of a single cow, and you can have a big milk industry.
When the colonials came they created lands for livestock farmers to rear their cattle; the farmers, because their population grew, they went and took over these lands. The government did not protect the herders at that time. No government came to protect them. I am 66 years old, so I know how these developments came about because I saw it with my own eyes, I was a teacher in the university that time. We warned of this challenge and nobody took us seriously. As a large scale farmer, anywhere you see you take it and say it is your own.
These large scale farmers along with traditional rulers went and cornered large chunks of land and a lot of the land belonged to the grazing reserve; the Fulani people and they turned them to their private estates. This was the beginning of these crises because they took over the lands that were reserved for the herders. And because the herders had no place, they moved to the south. And two, the northern part has no vegetation to take care of their cattle; so they moved south where there are no grazing reserves. So, that’s why this country is enmeshed.
