This is a necessary sequel to my article last week titled: “Owo Ranch: Attention, Gov. Peter Mbah!” You may have, like me, wondered why Governor Mbah would carve out over 10,000 hectares for the ranch project at his hometown, Owo, in Nkanu East LGA of Enugu State. Since his government has remained mute on the many issues surrounding the project, we are free to speculate. If he actually intends it for corporate, professional ranching, all I need to add is that he should ensure that the youths of Enugu State are strong stakeholders for their ownership, empowerment, and security. But if he has Fulani herdsmen in mind to appease the Sultan of Sokoto, it will be the greatest sell-out of all time. He would be creating a colony for ISWAP jihadists, who sometimes masquerade as Fulani herdsmen and bandits to target non-Muslim areas like the Middle Belt, South East, South-South, and Christian-majority South West states, Ondo and Ekiti. Mbah’s unacceptable “peace” gesture to the sultan has given rise to the thinking that the Owo Ranch is part of the “peace” offering to the chief jihadist of Nigeria. This speculation is not far-fetched. Some Igbo politicians believe that their political ambitions are greatly enhanced when they prostitute themselves to Fulani interests.
Mbah is very ambitious beyond his quest for a second term. Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s sickening theatrical displays against Peter Obi are linked to post-gubernatorial ambitions of being considered as Vice President to the next President from the North. Mbah could also be eyeing the same thing, what with his rising profile as a top performer. It was the same motivation that pushed Senator Orji Uzor Kalu who, as governor of Abia State, gave away a huge parcel of land in Lokpanta, Abia State, to northerners. They went on not only to turn the place into a Northern city; it also became an arena of barbaric crimes such as kidnapping for ransom and the slaughtering of victims, mostly travellers and abducted locals. It took Governor Alex Otti to neutralise that crime scene. During Muhammadu Buhari’s regime, the killings in that axis were officially attributed to IPOB and ESN.
It is a well-established fact that many Igbo politicians are ready to sell or even sacrifice their mothers on the altars of their political ambitions. I am not accusing Governor Mbah of selling out Owo, Enugu, and the Igbo people to Fulani jihadist expansionists for ambition. I am only hoping aloud that he does not do so. These articles serve to call for vigilance to ensure that the Owo Ranch project remains strictly for ranching, and not a giveaway for a Fulani Ruga. We all (not just Enugu people) must strongly resist any attempt to invite our violent, sworn enemies to take their place among us. After last week’s article came out, a friend and colleague from Enugu State wrote to me and opined that Gov. Mbah should scrap the ranch project and instead convert it to a farm estate for the cultivation of crops. Mbah’s administration already has a robust vision for agriculture, of which the ranch is a part. I am not opposed to the ranch per se. We in the East need them, for several reasons. Our years of dependence on the North for food have imposed an existential threat on us. The jihadists in the North have devised many insidious strategies to poison and rapidly depopulate the South, especially the Christian-majority Eastern Region.
Almost every food item produced in the far North, especially beans, fish, and fruits, is poisoned with dangerous insecticides, particularly the killer poison known as “Sniper”, before they are trucked down to Southern markets. Some fruits are deliberately injected and sold to unsuspecting consumers. Those who do this either do it for profit or as part of their demonic religious agenda. There are countless stories of how some herdsmen have sex with their animals, which are later slaughtered in abattoirs and sold to unsuspecting buyers. Most of them were born and raised in the bush and have little to zero exposure to ethics of any sort.
It is high time that Southerners, and the Igbo in particular, retook full control of their agricultural resources. We must encourage our youths to abandon urban poverty and return to farm the land and practise animal husbandry as we used to do before the Civil War. We have our local varieties of goats, chicken, cows, peppers, tomatoes, groundnuts, and fruits, which are even more delicious and nutritious than their Sahel counterparts. If we cultivate our lands with modern farming techniques, we will end food dependence on the North. We have arable land in abundance. Indeed, with the Chinese now given free entry to dump their cheap goods on us by direct retail, agriculture offers a viable alternative.
The massive involvement of our youths in agriculture will come with many benefits. One of them is the full control of our security. Over 50 years of rural–urban drift created a lot of ungoverned spaces which the herdsmen and their armed kinsmen, the jihadists, now occupy and with which they threaten our communities, with very little challenge. We must change that situation. We must reclaim our lands and prosper from them. Only fools depend on their self-sworn enemies for their food supply. When we return to our land, we will be able to restore our genuine culture, not the fake occult trends that fraudsters now peddle as Omenala. We will ranch with improved varieties of livestock on an industrial scale. This will include breeding the dwarf native Muturu cows, which give organic prestige to the Ogbuefi title. You cannot kill a long-legged Sahel N’dama cow and call yourself Ogbuefi. People are only doing it because of the scarcity of the right kind of cow. It is scarce because we abandoned breeding it. Let us bring Igbo ingenuity into the livestock business, and show them how it’s done!
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