Some experts have warned that the approval by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), for the review of 368 grazing sites in 25 states may snowball into a constitutional crisis.

They also described the move as unnecessary as it depicted lack of understanding of legality on the part of the Presidency.

On August 19, 2021, the President approved the recommendations of a committee to review “with dispatch” 368 grazing sites across 25 states in the country “to determine the levels of encroachment.”

Barely 24 hours after the directive, Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, signed the Open Grazing Prohibition Bill into law in his state.

Speaking to our correspondent, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and policy expert, Dr Obadiah Mailafia, said grazing routes could not be resuscitated because the laws establishing them had been overtaken by successive legislation.

He stated, “This is legal illiteracy displayed by the Presidency. Those grazing routes were demarcated in the Constitution of 1963.

“But with the creation of states and the Land Use Act of 1978 and now with a new constitution, those routes cannot be resuscitated because they have been overtaken by a new constitution and successive legislation, which vests power over land in the people with the governor holding it in trust for them.

“Under our constitution, no power on earth can alienate or dispossess them of the land unless through a legal means when the government requires it for projects of a public kind with adequate compensation in consultation with the state governments. Since that is not done, what the President is doing is an exercise in futility and an expression of legal illiteracy.”

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On his part, a former Director of the Department of State Services, Mike Ejiofor, warned about an impending constitutional crisis if the Federal Government failed to respect the decisions of states where the grazing routes once existed, which had now ban open grazing.

He said, “There is going to be a constitutional problem arising from this. If governors are empowered by the Land Use Act of 1978 to oversee land and control allocation, and the Federal Government comes to approve grazing sites in a state where the government has banned open grazing, they’re going to have problems.

“And you know that one of the problems we are facing is the farmers-herders’ clash. So, I don’t know how a state will make its own law prohibiting it and the Federal Government makes moves to open old grazing sites.

“So, I see a constitutional crisis, which will have to be resolved by the court. Also, we are in a democracy and we’re practising federalism. So, there is a need for each tier of government to respect the authority of the other.”