By Felix Umande

The Benue State House of Assembly may have meant well when it passed the “Law to Provide for the Establishment of Benue State Forestry, Mines and Solid Minerals Management Commission.” But good intentions do not cure constitutional defects. On mines and solid minerals, the law is a direct affront to the 1999 Constitution and it can not stand.

The Constitution Is Unambiguous Mining Is Federal.
Item 39 of the Exclusive Legislative List, Second Schedule, Part I of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) reserves “Mines and minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geological surveys and natural gas” exclusively to the National Assembly. Section 4(2) and 4(3) make it plain: no State House of Assembly has the power to legislate on it.

The Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act, 2007 already “covers the field.” Section 1 of that Act vests the entire property in and control of all mineral resources in the Government of the Federation. The Mining Cadastre Office issues licences. The Mines Inspectorate Department regulates operations. Royalties go to the Federation Account.

In other words, when Benue creates a “Management Commission” for solid minerals, it is attempting to do what Abuja alone is empowered to do. Under Section 4(5) of the Constitution, where state law is inconsistent with federal law, the state law is void to the extent of the inconsistency. This law, therefore, arrives dead on arrival.

Precedent Is Against Benue.
This is not the first time a state has tested the waters. Lagos, Zamfara, and Ebonyi have all, at various points, set up agencies to regulate mining. But the Federal Government has consistently resisted them, and the courts have consistently sided with the Constitution. In AG Federation v. AG Lagos State, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that states cannot legislate on exclusive items. Benue is walking a path the judiciary has already closed.

Forestry Is Legal; Mining Is Not, You Can’t Bundle Them .
Constitutionally, the State Assembly has full powers to legislate on forestry because it is a residual matter under Section 4(7). The state can protect its forests, regulate logging, and manage reserves. However, the problem lies in the Assembly’s decision to bundle forestry with “Mines and Solid Minerals.”

By tying a valid power to an invalid one, the entire law risks being tainted. Once taken or contested in court, the mining portion would likely be struck down, leaving only the forestry provisions — if the drafting allows for severance at all.

The Real Danger: Legal Chaos and Investor Flight.
Beyond the legal theory lies practical harm due to the fact that Mining investors need, apart from social safety, the legal certainty to operate. If Benue begins issuing its own “Permits,” collecting “State royalties,” or sending its commission to mining sites, operators will face double regulation and double taxation. The result is fairly predictable: capital flight, litigations, and the growth of illegal mining in the confusion would ensue.

Consequently, the very revenue Benue hopes to get will vanish leaving in it’s trail, anarchy and chaos.

Worse still, if the mining commission sets up confrontations between state officials and federal regulators, who seals illegal sites? Who prosecutes? The law invites turf wars that only benefit criminal miners.

What Benue Can Do Instead
Benue is not powerless. It can incorporate a state-owned mining company and apply for licences from the Mining Cadastre Office like any other firm. It can tax surface rent, tenement rates, and business premises under the Fourth Schedule.

It can also use its environmental and land-use powers to ensure miners comply with state laws on land reclamation and community development. It can even partner with the Federal Government to police illegal mining.

What it cannot do is creating a parallel regulator that is the job of Abuja.

The Path Forward
The Governor should withhold assent and return the Bill for redrafting. The Assembly should strip out all references to “Mines and Solid Minerals” and pass a clean “Benue State Forestry Commission Law.” If the law is already assented to, the Attorney-General of the Federation should test it at the Supreme Court immediately.

Federalism is not about every state doing everything. It is about each tier respecting its lane. On solid minerals, the Constitution has given that lane to the Federal Government. Benue’s lawmakers swore to uphold the Constitution and should adhere to its provisions.

Middle East expert Yoni Ben Menachem warns that behind Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statements lies a structured plan to build a new Sunni axis that could replace Iran’s regional role.

Ben Menachem, a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, cautions that Turkey is emerging, in his view, as an increasing strategic threat to Israel. He argues that the policies led by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan go far beyond public rhetoric. According to him, “Turkey is the new Iran.”

He claims that Ankara is quietly working to establish a new Sunni bloc in the Middle East, based on the assumption that the Iranian regime will weaken or even collapse. Such a development, he says, would create a regional vacuum following the decline of the Shi’ite axis. Turkey, he adds, aims to fill this vacuum alongside Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, in a move intended to reshape the regional balance of power.

Ben Menachem’s assessment corresponds to steps taken by Ankara in recent years to position itself as a regional leader, partly by taking an active role in defending the Palestinian cause and opposing Israeli interests in the region.

On Sunday, Erdogan accused Israel of carrying out atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon and threatened potential military action against the Jewish state, similar to its past interventions in Karabakh and Libya.

Ankara has so far been cautious about approaching southern Syria, due to concerns over a direct confrontation with Israel
These latest comments, along with the already strained relations between Ankara and Jerusalem, could lead the two regional powers to sever ties completely, as MK Amichai Eliyahu suggested in his response to Erdogan on Sunday.

Is Turkey positioning to replace Iran in the region?

Alongside the diplomatic front, Turkey is also strengthening its military presence in Syria, in coordination with Ahmed al-Sharaa. However, Ben Menachem notes that Ankara has so far been cautious about approaching southern Syria, due to concerns over a direct confrontation with Israel.

Ben Menachem believes these steps reflect far broader regional ambitions that extend beyond Syria or Iran alone. According to him, Turkey seeks to expand its influence across the Middle East, including around the issue of Jerusalem and in the international arena, developments that Israel must take into account already now.

Regarding Turkey’s leadership, Ben Menachem described Erdogan as the most dangerous figure from Israel’s perspective and also identified Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan as another key power player in Ankara. He noted reports of tensions between the two, linked to Fidan’s alleged ambitions to eventually succeed Erdogan, though he added it remains unclear whether such a scenario will materialize.

Culled: The Jerusalem Post

A close examination of the protracted militant herdsmen occupation of Benue State reveals what appears to be a troubling intersection of strategic geographical determinism and leadership vulnerability in the affected areas.

What exactly is the strategic geography of these invasions when one considers the local government areas (LGAs) that have borne the brunt of repeated assaults?

A significant number including Guma, Makurdi, Gwer West, Logo, Ukum, Gwer East, Agatu, Apa and Kwande are frontier LGAs that share direct boundaries with Nasarawa and Taraba States. Kwande, in particular, shares an international border with Cameroon.

Several others including Agatu, Gwer West, Guma, Makurdi and Buruku lie along the fertile floodplains of the River Benue and its tributaries. These arable lands are a major source of attraction to desert-stricken and volatile herdsmen moving southwards from the Sahel and the far North.

Yet geographical determinism alone cannot explain the scale and persistence of occupation. Without the vulnerability of political leadership in the affected LGAs, geography would not have provided sufficient incentive for repeated invasion.

What Gwer East, Guma, Gwer West, Logo and Agatu share is not only fertile land or border exposure, but a deficit of well-articulated, visionary and dynamic political leadership at both local and national levels.

The leadership gap is a common denominator: these LGAs lack political figures with the weight and will to defend their security and strategic interests in Makurdi and Abuja.

Let us reverse the hypothesis: what has spared LGAs like Gboko, Tarkaa, Vandeikya, Otukpo and Konshisha from repeated, gruesome herdsmen invasions and occupation of their lands? Is it the effect of strategic leadership and geography, or merely sheer luck?

I stretch this imagination further. Could it be a coincidence or part of a broader, unspoken agenda that political leaders from these relatively spared LGAs have rarely, if ever, come out forcefully at state or national level to denounce and condemn the herdsmen occupation of Benue State?

It may be coincidence, but the political leaders of the non-occupied LGAs have largely maintained what looks like a conspiracy of silence, a silence that raises doubt and suspicion.

Where exactly do geographical determinism and leadership recruitment converge on the graph of herdsmen occupation in Benue?

I think aloud, though I may be wrong: somewhere, somehow, the future of Benue State appears mortgaged by leaders whose continuous silence assures militant herdsmen that occupation can proceed even in the face of security agencies that share intelligence and logistics across Nigeria.

The herdsmen invasion of Agena in Mbalom, Gwer East, has become a recurring decimal in the last two decades. The same pattern holds for Ugondo communities in Logo, and for the vulnerable and repeatedly assaulted Agatu and Apa. Kwande suffers a cycle of invasion and occupation. By contrast, Gboko, Tarkaa, Vandeikya, Otukpo and Konshisha have never experienced this level of attack and territorial occupation.

Could there be an unspoken arrangement that concedes some strategic geographical space within Benue for occupation by militant herdsmen as a form of political horse-trading in exchange for appointments and leadership positions at state and federal levels?

Until the entire Benue political elite and ruling class at both state and national levels reach a total consensus in condemning land grabbing and occupation by herdsmen, some communities in Benue will continue to bleed, and their lands will remain under occupation by militant herdsmen, both real and masquerading.

By Prof. Wilfred Terlumun Uji, Federal University, Lafia, Nasarawa State