The controversy over the Federal Government’s National Ranching Policy has taken a new turn in Benue State, with the state’s three principal sociocultural organisations speaking with one voice against its proposed pilot implementation. The groups argue that what the government describes as “Renewed Hope Livestock Villages” goes beyond conventional ranching and could create permanent settlements with far-reaching demographic, land-use and governance implications. They are calling instead for a state-led, voluntary and commercially driven livestock model that operates within Benue’s existing legal framework and gives priority to security, the return of displaced farming communities and meaningful stakeholder consultation.
Preamble and Mandate
WE, the undersigned apex sociocultural organisations of the three principal nationalities of Benue State, the Tiv nation (through Mzough U Tiv), the Idoma nation (through Ochetoha K’Idoma), and the Igede nation (through Omi Ny’Igede) issue this Joint Position Paper in response to the announcement by the Honourable Minister of Livestock Development, Alhaji Idi Mukhtar Maiha, on 11 August 2026, that the Federal Government has selected Benue State as one of six states for the pilot implementation of its National Ranching Policy.
We speak with one voice because this matter touches the foundations of our collective existence: the ancestral lands upon which our peoples have farmed for centuries, the constitutional framework that governs land administration in our federation, the physical security of millions of Benue citizens who continue to suffer the consequences of armed pastoral aggression, and the food security of a nation that depends disproportionately on Benue’s agricultural output.
This policy paper proceeds in the tradition of sober, evidence-based civic engagement and not from a position of ethnic chauvinism. We acknowledge that Nigeria needs to modernise its livestock sector, that ranching as an economic model is superior to nomadic pastoralism, and that pastoralists deserve dignified livelihoods within a constitutional framework. What we reject firmly and without equivocation is the conflation of legitimate livestock modernisation with the permanent appropriation of ancestral agricultural land, the creation of ethnically exclusive pastoral settlements inside farming communities, and the imposition of federal programmes on a state that was neither consulted nor has consented.
The Minister disclosed that the government “engaged more than 34 pastoral organisations” and met pastoralist leaders under the Sultan of Sokoto. The conspicuous absence from this narrative is any mention of consultation with the farming communities, traditional institutions, state governments, and sociocultural organisations of the six pilot states. In the specific case of Benue, the three apex sociocultural organisations; Mzough U Tiv, Ochetoha K’Idoma, and Omi Ny’Igede were not consulted. The Tiv Traditional Council and the Idoma Traditional Council were not consulted. The Governor and the State House of Assembly were not consulted to our knowledge. A policy that purports to resolve farmer-herder conflict by consulting only one side of the conflict is not a peace initiative. It is an imposition. The asymmetry is revelatory: the beneficiaries of the programme were engaged; the communities upon whose land the programme is to be imposed were not. This pattern, consultation with pastoral interests, imposition on farming communities is structurally identical to the RUGA approach that was rejected in 2019.
This document is organised in two complementary parts: a Governance Analysis that subjects the Federal Government’s policy architecture to rigorous scrutiny, and a formal Statement of Position setting out the demands and alternative framework that the peoples of Benue State present to the Federal Government, the Benue State Government, and all stakeholders of goodwill.
Governance Analysis of the Federal National Ranching
Policy
The following analysis subjects the Federal Government’s National Ranching Policy as articulated through the National Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy (NL-GAS), the rehabilitation of 417 grazing reserves into “Renewed Hope Livestock Villages,” and the selection of six pilot states to scrutiny. The purpose is not to dismiss livestock modernisation but to expose the structural contradictions, constitutional vulnerabilities, and security risks embedded in the policy as currently designed.
1. The Constitutional and Legal Framework: Any Federal Programme Must Comply with the Law
The constitutional architecture of Nigerian federalism assigns agriculture to the Concurrent Legislative List (Part II, Second Schedule, 1999 Constitution, Items 17, 18 and 20). Land administration is vested in State Governors under Section 1 of the Land Use Act, Cap. L5, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. Any Federal Government programme that requires the use of land within a state for agricultural or pastoral purposes must comply with the Constitution, the Land Use Act, the existing laws of the affected state, and the lawful authority of the State Government over land administration. The Federal Government cannot act as though these legal requirements do not exist. The Minister’s announcement that Benue has been “selected” implies a unilateral federal decision taken without regard to this legal framework. Neither the Governor of Benue State nor the Benue State House of Assembly has publicly indicated consent to or participation in this pilot. In the case of Benue, the proposed programme must contend with an existing, judicially validated state law, the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017, whose constitutional validity was affirmed in Attorney-General of Benue State & Anor v. Attorney-General of the Federation & 2 Ors (FHC/MKD/CS/56/2019). Any federal ranching programme operating in Benue State must operate within and subordinate to this law. A programme that contradicts, undermines, or effectively nullifies a validly enacted and judicially upheld state law is not consistent with constitutional federalism. This is not merely a legal technicality. It goes to the heart of federalism. If the Federal Government can designate land within a state for the permanent settlement of a specific population without the consent and participation of the state government, then the principle of state sovereignty over land administration is gravely undermined. The peoples of Benue State insist that constitutional due process be followed.
2. The Security Paradox: Rewarding Aggression, Punishing Victims
The Minister stated that the six pilot states were selected “because they have recorded some of the highest incidences of farmer-herder conflicts in recent years.” Examined from the perspective of the communities that have suffered those conflicts, this selection criterion creates a perverse incentive structure. Benue State has recorded over 7,000 deaths from attacks by armed militias and criminal elements since 2015. Over 1.5 million persons have been internally displaced. Seventeen of 23 local government areas are or have been under siege. The state’s agricultural output has been devastated. The Federal Government’s response to this catastrophe is not to identify, disarm, arrest, and prosecute the perpetrators of these killings, resettle the displaced farming communities, or provide reparations for destroyed livelihoods. Instead, it proposes to establish permanent pastoral settlements on the very land from which farming populations have been violently displaced. The logic is extraordinary: areas of high conflict are selected not for enhanced security operations or victim rehabilitation, but for the permanent establishment of pastoral settlements. If this logic were applied to any other form of violent dispossession, if the government responded to armed robbery by permanently settling robbers in the neighbourhoods they had terrorised, the absurdity would be self-evident. The peoples of Benue State should not be expected to accept this logic merely because the violence is pastoral rather than urban.
3. The Stakeholder Consultation Gap: 34 Pastoral Organisations, Zero Farming Communities
The Minister disclosed that the government “engaged more than 34 pastoral organisations” and met pastoralist leaders under the Sultan of Sokoto. The conspicuous absence from this narrative is any mention of consultation with the farming communities, traditional institutions, state governments, and sociocultural organisations of the six pilot states. In the specific case of Benue, the three apex sociocultural organisations; Mzough U Tiv, Ochetoha K’Idoma, and Omi Ny’Igede were not consulted. The Tiv Traditional Council and the Idoma Traditional Council were not consulted. The Governor and the State House of Assembly were not consulted to our knowledge. A policy that purports to resolve farmer-herder conflict by consulting only one side of the conflict is not a peace initiative. It is an imposition. The asymmetry is revelatory: the beneficiaries of the programme were engaged; the communities upon whose land the programme is to be imposed were not. This pattern, consultation with pastoral interests, imposition on farming communities is structurally identical to the RUGA approach that was rejected in 2019.
4. A Ranch or a Town? The Question the Government Must Answer
The Minister’s own description of the programme reveals the critical conflation. The “Renewed Hope Livestock Villages” are described as providing housing, schools, primary healthcare centres, solar lighting, water infrastructure, veterinary clinics, mosques, markets, dairy processing facilities, and renewable energy systems. The Wase model in Plateau State, presented as the proof of concept, includes staff housing, educational services, and “security infrastructure.” This is not a ranch. A ranch is an agricultural facility where livestock is kept and managed. What is described is a permanent human settlement, a town built around a livestock economy. The distinction is not semantic; it is existential.
A ranch can be closed if it fails commercially. A settlement with families, children in schools, patients in clinics, and worshippers in mosques cannot be reversed without a humanitarian crisis. Once established, these settlements acquire demographic permanence. Demographic permanence generates claims to political representation, traditional authority, land expansion, and administrative autonomy. This is the trajectory that has been documented in Southern Kaduna, parts of Niger State, and elsewhere.
The National Ranching Policy is, in substance, a cattle policy. Its entire architecture, grazing reserves, large-scale pastoral settlements, feedlots, abattoirs processing “500 cattle daily,” is designed around large ruminant production. The policy makes no meaningful provision for poultry, piggery, goat and sheep farming, rabbit production, aquaculture, entomoculture, or other micro-livestock sectors that collectively employ far more Nigerians, contribute more to household food security, and offer faster economic returns than extensive cattle ranching. This is not an oversight; it is a structural bias.
The government’s own language betrays the scale. The Minister spoke of “30,000 herds of cattle in one area” attracting processors, investments, and economic networks. Thirty thousand cattle require thousands of herders, their families, and ancillary workers. With the infrastructure described, the “village” becomes a de facto town of potentially tens of thousands of people, a permanent pastoral enclave within a farming society. The Federal Government must answer honestly: is this a ranch, or is this a town? The answer determines whether the peoples of the pilot states are being asked to support agricultural modernisation or to accept demographic engineering.
5. The 417 Grazing Reserves: Colonial Relics and Contested Territory
The government’s plan to rehabilitate 417 grazing reserves nationwide requires scrutiny of what these reserves actually are. Most were gazetted in the First Republic era (1960s), inheriting colonial-era pastoral designations. Many have since been absorbed by farming communities, urban expansion, or other land uses. In Benue State specifically, the concept of “grazing reserves” is fundamentally contested because: (a) the state enacted a law in 2017 explicitly prohibiting open grazing and providing for privately established ranches; (b) the communities occupying or adjacent to these historical reserves were never party to the original gazetting decisions and regard the land as ancestral territory; and (c) “rehabilitation” of reserves that have been farmed for decades amounts to dispossession of current occupants. The government has not published a comprehensive, state-by-state inventory of these 417 reserves, their current status, occupancy, or the legal validity of their original gazetting instruments under contemporary land legislation. Rehabilitating reserves without this foundational audit is an invitation to conflict, not a pathway to peace.
6. The Policy Genealogy: From Cattle Colonies to RUGA to NLTP to “Renewed Hope”
The constitutional, security, and procedural objections set out above would be sufficient grounds for rejection even if this policy were entirely new. But it is not new. It is the fourth iteration of a policy architecture that has been publicly rejected three times and the pattern demands acknowledgement. The Federal Government’s livestock settlement policy has undergone no fewer than four nomenclature changes in eight years without any fundamental alteration in its operative mechanism. The lineage is unmistakable: Cattle Colonies (2018), Rural Grazing Areas/RUGA (2019), National Livestock Transformation Plan/NLTP (2019–2023), and now the National Ranching Policy with its “Renewed Hope Livestock Villages” (2025–present). Each iteration was abandoned under public pressure; each successor replicated the core architecture of its predecessor: federal selection of states, designation of land within those states for pastoral use, construction of permanent settlement infrastructure (housing, schools, clinics, mosques, markets), and the concentration of pastoral populations on land administered outside the host community’s traditional governance structures.
The selection of the same cluster of states is itself diagnostic. The original NLTP pilot states were Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba, and Zamfara. The current pilot list, Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Adamawa, and the FCT, is functionally identical, with Taraba and Zamfara swapped for the FCT. This is not coincidence; it is institutional persistence. The bureaucratic DNA of the programme has not changed. The question that must be asked is: if the fundamental design were sound, why has it been rejected and rebranded four times? And if it is being rebranded rather than redesigned, what confidence should the peoples of the pilot states have that the fifth iteration will produce different outcomes from the first four?
7. The Economic Contradiction: Undermining the Food Basket to Feed Cattle
Benue State is colloquially and substantively Nigeria’s “Food Basket.” It is the nation’s leading producer of several staple crops including yams, cassava, soybeans, sesame, rice, and citrus. Converting significant tracts of this productive agricultural land into pastoral reserves or livestock villages directly contradicts the Federal Government’s own stated objectives on food security, agricultural diversification, and rural economic development. The NL-GAS projects growth of the livestock sector from $32 billion to $74 billion by 2035. But this projection does not account for the crop production losses that would result from converting farmland in states like Benue. Nigeria cannot achieve food security by cannibalising its crop sector to feed its livestock sector. The two must be developed in parallel, not at each other’s expense. The policy reveals a fundamental failure to think in terms of integrated agricultural economics, treating livestock as a sector to be expanded at the cost of crop agriculture, rather than within a holistic food system.
8. The Micro-Livestock Omission: A Policy for Cattle Owners, Not Livestock Farmers
The National Ranching Policy is, in substance, a cattle policy. Its entire architecture, grazing reserves, large-scale pastoral settlements, feedlots, abattoirs processing “500 cattle daily,” is designed around large ruminant production. The policy makes no meaningful provision for poultry, piggery, goat and sheep farming, rabbit production, aquaculture, entomoculture, or other micro-livestock sectors that collectively employ far more Nigerians, contribute more to household food security, and offer faster economic returns than extensive cattle ranching. This is not an oversight; it is a structural bias.
A genuinely inclusive national livestock policy would allocate resources proportionately across all livestock sub-sectors, support smallholder farmers (the vast majority of whom are women and youth), and recognise that cattle are not the only animals that matter to Nigeria’s protein economy. The exclusive focus on cattle, the livestock category most closely associated with the nomadic pastoral economy, reinforces the perception that the policy is designed to benefit a specific economic constituency rather than to modernise Nigerian livestock production comprehensively.
9. What Is in This Policy for the Benue Livestock Farmer?
This question has not been asked, and the silence is revealing. Benue State has a thriving and diverse livestock economy. Our people are involved in poultry farming, piggery, goat and sheep rearing, fish farming, and indeed cattle production. Our women and youth are disproportionately represented in these sectors. If substantial public resources are to be channelled into livestock development, the peoples of Benue State, particularly our youths and women, should have equal access to those opportunities.
Yet the National Ranching Policy, as designed, offers nothing to a Benue poultry farmer in Otukpo, nothing to a Tiv woman raising goats in Gboko, nothing to a young fish farmer in Oju, and nothing to the thousands of Benue citizens already producing livestock within the existing legal framework. The entire policy architecture, the funding, the infrastructure, the international investment, the federal attention, is directed at large-scale cattle ranching associated with the nomadic pastoral economy. This is not an inclusive livestock policy. It is a sectoral transfer programme that bypasses the livestock farmers who are already present and productive in Benue State.
We submit that the framing of Nigeria’s livestock challenge must move beyond the tired narrative of “farmer versus herder.” The real question is how to build an inclusive livestock economy that serves all Nigerians, including the millions of smallholder livestock farmers, women, and youth who are already contributing to Nigeria’s protein supply but who receive neither policy attention nor resource allocation. If the Federal Government is serious about livestock modernisation, let it start by asking what its policy offers to the livestock farmers who already exist, not only to the pastoral constituency it wishes to settle on other peoples’ land.
10. The Niger State Warning: What Happens When Pastoral Settlements Go Wrong
The experience of Niger State, where Governor Mohammed Umar Bago was compelled to strip all Fulani traditional leaders (Ardos) of chieftaincy authority due to their alleged complicity in the security crisis, is a contemporaneous warning that the Federal Government has not adequately addressed. If traditional pastoral governance structures can be co-opted for criminal purposes, cattle rustling, banditry, arms trafficking, and the concealment of armed groups, in a state where those structures have been established for generations, what safeguards exist in the proposed pilot to prevent similar outcomes in states where new pastoral settlements are being created from scratch?
The government has not published any governance framework for the proposed “Livestock Villages,” no security protocols, no accountability mechanisms, no provisions for host community oversight, no conflict-resolution architecture, no provisions for boundary enforcement, no exit clauses if the settlements become sources of insecurity rather than engines of peace. This is governance by aspiration, not by design.
11. The International Investment Question: Who Benefits?
The government has disclosed $2.5 billion in investment commitments from Brazilian livestock companies, including JBS, and ongoing discussions with Arla, Nestlé, Danone, Promasidor, and FrieslandCampina. These are welcome developments for Nigeria’s livestock economy. But they raise a critical question: whose land will these investments be built on, and who will own the resulting enterprises?
If the “Renewed Hope Livestock Villages” are established on land appropriated from farming communities, and the economic benefits of the livestock value chain flow primarily to multinational processors, pastoral cattle owners, and federal-level intermediaries, then the host communities will have surrendered their ancestral land and received nothing in return. The policy creates a structure in which the land is provided by farming communities, the cattle are owned by pastoral interests, and the profits are captured by industrial investors, a colonial extraction model applied to domestic agriculture.
The Benue Context: Why This State Cannot And Must Not Be A Pilot
A. The Ongoing Security Crisis
Benue State is not at peace. It is under siege. The scale of the violence inflicted on Benue farming communities by armed militias and criminal elements constitutes one of the most serious internal security crises in Nigeria. The statistics, over 7,000 deaths since 2015, over 1.5 million internally displaced persons, 17 of 23 local government areas affected, ongoing attacks in 2026 in Agatu, Gwer West, Guma, Ohimini, and Otukpo LGAs, describe a situation closer to low-intensity warfare than to “farmer-herder clashes.”
The euphemistic language of “conflict” obscures the asymmetry: armed groups with AK-47s and sophisticated weaponry attacking farming communities whose primary instruments are hoes and machetes. It is unconscionable to propose permanent pastoral settlements in a state where farming communities have not yet returned to their ancestral homes. Before any discussion of ranching policy can take place in Benue, the following preconditions must be met: those responsible for killings and displacement must be identified, disarmed, arrested, and prosecuted; all internally displaced persons must be returned safely to their ancestral communities; reparations must be paid for destroyed communities, farmlands, and livelihoods. Only then can our people be asked to consider the establishment of ranches within their communities, a process that will inevitably remind them of the blood that has been spilled over the years and must therefore be approached with the utmost sensitivity and respect for their trauma.
B. The Existing Legal Framework
Benue State has not been passive in the face of the farmer-herder crisis. It has legislated. The Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017, is the most comprehensive state-level livestock regulation in Nigeria. It prohibits open grazing, provides for the establishment of privately-operated ranches, establishes a Livestock Guards force, and prescribes penalties for violations.
All livestock management in Benue State must operate under the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017, as may be amended by the Benue State House of Assembly. The Federal Government’s role is to support the implementation of this law through funding, technical assistance, veterinary expertise, and security deployment not to replace it with a competing federal framework. This is the constitutional model: the state legislates, the state administers, and the federal government assists.
The law was challenged by the Federal Government and upheld by the Federal High Court. It represents the considered legislative will of the people of Benue State. Any federal ranching programme that does not operate within and subordinate to this existing legal framework is, by definition, an attempt to override the legislative authority of the Benue State House of Assembly and the judicial authority of the Federal High Court. We will not accept this.
C. The Ancestral Land Question
Land in Benue State is not a commodity to be allocated by federal technocrats. It is ancestral inheritance, the foundation of agricultural livelihoods that have sustained our peoples for centuries, the site of cultural and spiritual identity, and the patrimony of future generations. The Tiv, Idoma, and Igede peoples did not acquire their land through conquest or colonial allocation; they have occupied it from time immemorial.
The proposal to “rehabilitate grazing reserves” in Benue assumes that there exist large tracts of unoccupied or underutilised land that can be repurposed for pastoral use. This assumption is false. Benue is one of the most densely farmed states in Nigeria. Every hectare of arable land is either under cultivation, in fallow rotation, or occupied by farming communities. There is no spare land to give away, and the peoples of Benue State have no intention of surrendering what they have.
D. The Traditional Council Positions
In May 2025, both the Tiv Traditional Council under the Tor Tiv and the Idoma Traditional Council under the Och’Idoma issued formal positions calling for the removal of armed herders from the state and the protection of farming activities. These positions reflect the unanimous sentiment of the traditional governance structures of Benue State. The Federal Government cannot claim to have consulted Benue stakeholders when the state’s highest traditional authorities have expressly rejected the premises upon which the policy is built.
Our Firm Position
Having considered the Federal Government’s National Ranching Policy, its pilot implementation plan, its historical antecedents, its constitutional implications, its security dimensions, and its potential consequences for the peoples of Benue State, the Mzough U Tiv, Ochetoha K’Idoma, and Omi Ny’Igede hereby declare, jointly and severally, as follows:
First: We support the modernisation of Nigeria’s livestock sector through commercially viable,privately operated, and legally regulated ranching. We have no objection to ranching as an economic model. We object to what is being proposed under the guise of ranching: the permanent appropriation of ancestral farmland for ethnically exclusive pastoral settlements imposed by federal fiat without state consent, community consultation, or constitutional authority.
Second: We reject, categorically and without qualification, the inclusion of Benue State in the Federal Government’s pilot National Ranching Programme as announced on 11 August 2026. This rejection is grounded in constitutional principle (the Federal Government lacks the authority to impose agricultural land-use decisions on states), legal reality (Benue has a validly enacted and judicially upheld law governing livestock management), security imperatives (the state is under active armed pastoral aggression), and the sovereign will of the peoples of Benue State as expressed through their traditional institutions, legislative representatives, religious bodies, and sociocultural organisations.
Third: We reject the concept of “Renewed Hope Livestock Villages” as applied to Benue State. These are not ranches; they are permanent demographic settlements. We will not accept the compulsory conversion of ancestral farmland into pastoral enclaves, however described. Benue land is not available for appropriation or for “rehabilitation” into pastoral territory by federal fiat. Where any person genuinely wishes to establish a commercial ranch, the pathway exists: acquire or lease land lawfully through the state’s land administration system, obtain the necessary consents, and operate under Benue law. That is what our 2017 law provides. What we reject is compulsory acquisition, federal imposition, and settlement by decree.
Fourth: We demand that the Federal Government fulfil its primary constitutional obligation to the peoples of Benue State, the protection of life and property. Those responsible for killings and displacement, the armed militias, criminal elements, and unlawful occupiers, must be identified, disarmed, arrested, and prosecuted. Our displaced people must be returned safely to their ancestral communities. The sequence matters: security and justice first, resettlement of the displaced second, reparations third, and only then, within a framework of state-led, law-compliant, voluntary, and commercially driven ranching, can livestock modernisation be discussed.
Fifth: We note, with profound concern, the pattern of policy rebranding, from Cattle Coloniesto RUGA to NLTP to the current National Ranching Policy, which suggests that the Federal Government’s objective has remained constant across administrations despite repeated public rejection. We warn that the peoples of Benue State are not deceived by nomenclature. The substance of the policy, not its name, determines our response.
The Alternative We Demand: A Benue-Led Livestock: Modernisation Framework
We do not merely reject; we propose. The peoples of Benue State offer the following alternative framework for livestock modernisation that is consistent with constitutional federalism, protective of farming communities, supportive of genuine ranching enterprise, and conducive to lasting peace:
1. State-Led Implementation Under Existing Law
All livestock management in Benue State must operate under the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017, as may be amended by the Benue State House of Assembly. The Federal Government’s role is to support the implementation of this law through funding, technical assistance, veterinary expertise, and security deployment not to replace it with a competing federal framework. This is the constitutional model: the state legislates, the state administers, and the federal government assists.
2. Voluntary, Private, Commercial Ranching
Ranches in Benue State should be established by willing private investors, whether indigenous or from elsewhere in Nigeria or the world, who lawfully acquire or lease land through the state’s land administration system, comply with all applicable regulations, and operate as commercial enterprises subject to the same planning, environmental, and security standards as any other business. There should be no government-designated pastoral settlements, no compulsory land acquisition for pastoral use, and no “reserves” rehabilitated for exclusive pastoral occupation.
3. Inclusive Livestock Policy Beyond Cattle
The Benue State Government should develop a comprehensive livestock development policy that covers all animal protein sectors, poultry, piggery, goat and sheep farming, aquaculture, rabbit production, entomoculture, and apiculture alongside cattle. Federal funding should support this comprehensive approach, not be channelled exclusively into cattle infrastructure. The smallholder farmers, women, and youth of Benue State deserve the same policy attention and resource allocation as large-scale cattle owners.
4. Concurrent Enforcement of the Anti-Open Grazing Law
No ranching programme can succeed while open grazing continues unchecked. The Federal Government must deploy security assets, military, police, and intelligence, to support the enforcement of Benue’s anti-open grazing law. This means interdicting armed militias and criminal elements, confiscating illegally grazed livestock, prosecuting offenders, and dismantling the networks that have terrorised farming communities.
5. Community Consent and Benefit-Sharing
Any livestock enterprise that involves the use of land in Benue State must be established with the free, prior, and informed consent of the host community and its traditional leadership. No ranch or livestock facility should be established over the objection of the community on whose land it is to sit. Where communities consent, benefit-sharing arrangements, including employment, revenue participation, and infrastructure provision, must be legally binding and enforceable.
6. Security Architecture Before Economic Development
The Federal Government should immediately establish a special security framework for Benue State that prioritises the identification, disarmament, arrest, and prosecution of armed militias and criminal elements responsible for killings and displacement; the safe return of all internally displaced persons to their ancestral communities; and the restoration of farming activities in all 23 local government areas. Economic development programmes, including livestock modernisation, can only succeed in an environment of security and stability. Building ranches in a war zone is not development; it is appeasement of the aggressor.
The peoples of Benue State are not opposed to progress. We are not opposed to livestock modernisation. We are not opposed to the prosperity of pastoralist Nigerians. We are opposed to being made to pay the price of that progress with our ancestral lands, our security, our agricultural livelihoods, and the future of our children. Nigeria is a federation. In a federation, the central government does not impose land-use decisions on constituent states. It does not settle populations on other peoples’ land without consent. It does not respond to violence by rewarding the perpetrators and dispossessing the victims. It does not rebrand rejected policies and present them as new initiatives. It does not consult one side of a conflict and impose the outcome on the other. We call on the Federal Government to demonstrate that it respects the principles of federalism, the rule of law, the constitution it is sworn to uphold, and the rights of the farming communities of the Middle Belt.
Specific Demands and Calls to Action
To the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria:
1. Immediately withdraw the inclusion of Benue State from the pilot National Ranching Programme pending formal consultation with and consent of the Benue State Government, the Benue State House of Assembly, the Traditional Councils, and the three apex sociocultural organisations.
2. Direct the Minister of Livestock Development to redesign the policy to respect the constitutional primacy of state governments in agricultural land-use decisions and to operate within existing state legal frameworks.
3. Order a comprehensive security operation to identify, disarm, arrest, and prosecute all armed militias, criminal elements, and unlawful occupiers responsible for killings and displacement in Benue State, and establish a framework for the safe return and resettlement of all internally displaced persons to their ancestral communities.
4. Establish a Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the mass killings, destruction, anddisplacement that have occurred in Benue State since 2014, with a mandate to identify perpetrators, recommend prosecutions, and propose reparations.
5. Ensure that the National Ranching Policy is broadened to encompass all livestock sub-sectors and is not reduced to a cattle-only programme that disproportionately benefits a single pastoral constituency.
To the Executive Governor of Benue State:
1. Formally communicate to the Federal Government that Benue State has not consented to and does not accept inclusion in the pilot ranching programme as currently designed.
2. Strengthen the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017, through amendments that address identified gaps including commercial lease provisions, financial support for small-scale livestock farmers, livestock identification and tracking, and stakeholder consultation mechanisms.
3. Establish a Benue State Livestock Modernisation Commission to coordinate a comprehensive, state-led livestock development programme that is consistent with the state’s legal framework and serves the interests of all Benue citizens.
4. Conduct a comprehensive audit of all historical grazing reserve designations within Benue State, determine their current legal status under the Land Use Act and the 2017 law, and take all necessary executive and legislative action to protect occupied farmland from reclassification or appropriation.
5. Mobilise all available state security apparatus and engage the Federal Government for additional security deployment to protect farming communities from armed militias and criminal elements.
To the Minister of Livestock Development:
1. Initiate genuine, inclusive consultation with all stakeholders in the proposed pilot states including farming communities, traditional institutions, state governments, and sociocultural organisations before proceeding with implementation.
2. Publish the complete list of 417 grazing reserves, including their location, size, current occupancy, legal status, and the basis upon which they are claimed as federal or state assets.
3. Clarify publicly whether the “Renewed Hope Livestock Villages” are intended as commercial livestock facilities or as permanent human settlements, and if the latter, acknowledge the demographic implications transparently.
4. Redesign the policy to distinguish clearly between ranch infrastructure (which is welcome) and settlement infrastructure (which is not acceptable in states that have not consented).
Conclusion
The peoples of Benue State are not opposed to progress. We are not opposed to livestock modernisation. We are not opposed to the prosperity of pastoralist Nigerians. We are opposed to being made to pay the price of that progress with our ancestral lands, our security, our agricultural livelihoods, and the future of our children. Nigeria is a federation. In a federation, the central government does not impose land-use decisions on constituent states. It does not settle populations on other peoples’ land without consent. It does not respond to violence by rewarding the perpetrators and dispossessing the victims. It does not rebrand rejected policies and present them as new initiatives. It does not consult one side of a conflict and impose the outcome on the other. We call on the Federal Government to demonstrate that it respects the principles of federalism, the rule of law, the constitution it is sworn to uphold, and the rights of the farming communities of the Middle Belt.
We call on the Governor of Benue State to stand firmly on the side of his people and their existing legal framework. We call on all Nigerians of goodwill to recognise that what is being proposed in Benue, under the language of ranching, is a fundamental threat to the land rights, food security, and physical survival of farming communities.
We shall not accept the compulsory conversion of our ancestral land into pastoral settlements. We shall not accept demographic engineering disguised as agricultural policy. We shall not be silent while our constitutional rights are eroded by executive fiat. We shall deploy every legal, constitutional, civic, diplomatic, and democratic instrument available to us to protect the inheritance of our peoples. The peoples of Benue State have spoken. With one voice.
Signed:
Air. Commodore Titus Agbecha (Rtd), For and on behalf of MZOUGH U TIV (MUT) President-General Date: 14th August 2026
Professor Yakubu Ochefu For and on behalf of OCHETOHA K’IDOMA (OKI) President-General Date: 14th August 2026
Mr. Daniel Omeno For and on behalf of OMI NY’IGEDE (ONI) President-General Date: 14th August 2026
Makurdi, Benue State August 2026
Being the Joint Position Paper of the Mzough U Tiv (MUT); Ochetoha K’idoma (OKI) and Omi Ny’Igede (ONI) on the Federal Government’s National Ranching Policy and the Proposed Pilot Implementation in Benue State; addressed His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR; His Excellency, Rt. Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia, Executive Governor of Benue State; Honourable Minister of Livestock Development, Alhaji Idi Mukhtar Maiha; dated August 2026 Makurdi, Benue State.
