Introduction
Herdsmen–farmer clashes have occurred in the West African subregion for some centuries. In earlier times, such face-offs were usually settled amicably with little or no destruction of property and lives. This is no longer the case, with such conflicts now especially problematic in Nigeria. A combination of factors, notably economic and political instability in the Maghreb, encroaching desertification, and the plurality of the identity of the herders (usually Fulani), has upset the traditional ‘table-of-peace’ pacifist settlement model in many West African states. Setting out from Senegal, the Fulani herders have found Nigeria as their most attractive destination. This is because of the availability of a huge land mass very rich in all-year fodder and a huge market for cattle. As would be expected, the herders’ extensive appetite for grazing land has brought them into conflict with sedentary farmers, owners of the same land.
In Nigeria, there are various forms of land tenure systems ranging from communal ownership, inheritance tenure system, leasehold tenure system, rent tenure system, gift tenure system, freehold tenure system, and tenant at government will. In the 1960s, while the Northern Regional Government created grazing routes for cattle to avoid herdsmen–farmer crises, in southern Nigeria, the inheritance tenure system prevailed. Land ownership structures in Nigeria had evolved over the years until a single land policy document, otherwise known as the Land Use Act of 1978, was established. The Act with is socialist bent attempts to harmonise and regulate land ownership in the country with arguably excessive state control of land ownership, use and development (Udoekanem, Adoga and Onwumere, Reference Udoekanem, Adoga and Onwumere2014). The state did not take cognition of the prevailing realities of customary land law and informal markets forces (Oluwatayo, Omowunmi and Ojo, Reference Oluwatayo Isaac, Omowunmi and Ojo Ayodeji2019). Nigeria’s Land Use Act abolished all existing freehold systems and standardised land administration systems across the country. Power over all urban land within a state was now vested with the state governor, while all non-urban land was now regulated by respective local governments. The Land Use Act made it possible for the government to obtain land for development where it deems fit. It empowers state governors to issue certificates of occupancy (C of O) to applicants, thereby conferring greater authority over land matters than the Federal Government. It also empowers the state governor to compulsorily acquire private rights over land without the willing consent of its owner or occupant, for public good, subject to compensation. In distinction to most other African states, the state ownership of land in Nigeria depended on the governors of the composite thirty-six state-structure, unlike what obtains in most other African states, where usufruct rights were given to farmers by the Federal Government (Lavers, Reference Lavers2018; Mersha and Githinji, Reference Mersha and Wa Githinji2005).Footnote 1 In principle, the state government, not the federal government, gives rights of ownership to lands within her jurisdiction and determines when such lands are needed for public good. Often when the state and the federal government have divided political interests, they can hardly agree on issues bordering on the protection of federal government interest especially with regard to land. This is why there are no agreements between the states and the Federal Government on how to deal with the crisis generated by herders.
This study focuses on southern and central Nigeria, comprising four geopolitical zones: south-east, south-south, south-west and north-central. The area has guinea savannah, rain forest, and mangrove vegetation zones. Farmers in this area primarily produce tuber crops that take many months to mature. The study focuses specifically on Benue State, generally regarded as the ‘Food Basket of the Nation’. This state recorded the most tragic cases of herdsmen–farmer clashes during the period of the study, 2012–16. The 2006 national census of Nigeria had a population of 4,253,641 for the state, with a land area of 34,049 km (NPC, 2007). The state comprises twenty-three local government areas (hereafter LGAs). This study focuses on ten of the LGAs, specifically those that were the arena of the conflicts in the state.
Farming is the lifewire of the economy, engaging more than 70 per cent of the working population. The food crops include yam, cassava, sweet potato, beans, maize, millet, guinea corn, vegetables, etc. The clashes have caused a food price crisis, and the FAO has suggested that to meet the growing global food need, food production would need to double by 2050 (Borras Jr, Reference Borras2009). Much of this required increase would have to happen in developing countries where the majority of the world’s rural poor live, and where 95 per cent of the estimated population increases during this period are expected to occur. Unfortunately, herdsmen–farmer clashes have significantly increased food insecurity in Nigeria.
Approach
The study investigated the causes of the frequent herdsmen–farmer clashes in Nigeria and the human and material costs. The patron-client theory has been adopted to explain the impudence of the herders who wield sophisticated weapons instead of clubs; and, the relative deprivation theory to explain herders’ attachment to cattle and farmers’ attachment to land; a situation that has ignited herdsmen–farmer contests over grazing fields and farmlands. The traditional means of amicably settling the herdsmen–farmer impasse is also examined. The activities of the herdsmen in various Nigerian communities suggest a contest over the herders’ right to graze and the farmers’ right to farm. The last two sections expose the duplicity of chiefs who receive gifts from ignorant or, perhaps, tricky herders, in utter disregard of traditional land tenure system. An assessment of the cost (human and material) of the clashes is made and also suggestions on how to stem the rifts.
Data was collected from newspaper reports on herdsmen–farmer clashes, from secondary sources such as journals and books, as well as through interviews with fifty herders and fifty farmers in Benue State. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been employed in analysing the data. Five farmers in the ratio of two female to three male farmers were selected from the ten LGAs of Ado, Agatu, Apa, Buruku, Guma, Gwer, Gwer West, Logo, Tarka, and Ukum where the crises were most severe. Locating participants within their specific localities was problematic, in part because they had been displaced by the crises engendered by the nomadic character of the herders. For this reason, the researchers used non-probability sampling techniques, and in particular snowball sampling (Earl Babbie and Lucia Benaquisto, 2002: 166). Thus, data was collected from available informants through whom we located other informants, including internally displaced persons (IDPs). Some of the IDPs were too traumatised to open up to us at the camps. We were able to interview fifty herders located within the ten LGAs. The herders were all men, and we did not deem it fit to interview their wives because of cultural inhibitions and suspicion on the part of their husbands. We had group discussions with displaced farmers at Abagene, Daudu, Mbawa camps and obtained information on the traditional mechanisms for peaceful resolution of conflicts among the herders and farmers that had once proved successful. What follows analyses the human and material losses suffered during the period to assess the cost of the clashes and suggests ways of avoiding future occurrences.
Review
An established body of work exists on herdsmen–farmer conflicts in many West African countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria. In Nigeria in particular, herdsmen–farmer clashes have become acutely topical in both academic and political discourses. Benue, Plateau, Kogi, Nasarawa, Enugu, Kaduna, Taraba, and Delta States, have experienced scenarios reminiscent of the Darfur massacre. Fasona and Omojola (Reference Fasona and Omojola2005) in their study of herdsmen–farmer conflicts in Nigeria between 1991–2005 found that the conflicts accounted for 35 per cent of all major clashes reported by leading Nigerian newspapers. The International Crisis Group (2014) reported that pastoralists habitually migrate from the northern parts of Nigeria to the southern parts in search of pasture. In the process, their cattle often devour farmers’ crops. This development has occasioned numerous herdsmen–farmer open clashes. Reports have asserted that Fulani herdsmen provide logistics and camouflage to Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria. Many authors (Olayoku, Reference Olayoku2014; McGregor, Reference McGregor2014; Audu, Reference Audu2014; Abass, Reference Abass2012; Krause, Reference Krause2011; Blench, Reference Blench2010) are of the opinion that the fluidity of international and domestic state borders has encouraged the pastoralists to operate as if these did not exist at all.
Ifatimehin and Tenuch argue that in central Nigeria these conflicts have led to land and water degradation, as trampling herds of cattle despoil the soil thus in turn precipitating local crises (2009: 360–4). The conflicts have their roots in the land tenure system, which the migrating herders do not understand or care to respect, hence the contest over land use. Abiodun Alao (Reference Alao2007) gives a detailed account of how claims contest over natural resources have nursed several conflict situations. He examined herdsmen–farmer conflicts in the Benin Republic in 1999 and a particular case of cattle running into a trap set by a farmer and how the herders subsequently laid ambush and killed the farmer by way of retaliation. The farmer had set the trap for ‘bush meat’ but the herders took his life because it caught one of their cows. In Ghana, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, and Nigeria, cattle encroachment on agricultural farms has also been a source of worry (Moritz, Reference Moritz2010; Hussein, Reference Hussein1998; Chukwuma, Reference Chukwuma2020; Campbell, Reference Campbell2019).
Breusers et al. (Reference Breusers, Nederlof and van Rheeneh1998) attribute herdsmen–farmer clashes in Burkina Faso to the herders’ search for pasture southwards during the dry season, the herders becoming entangled with farmers when the herds trampled on their crops. Tonah (Reference Tonah2006: 33–45) attributes the southward movement of the herdsmen and the numerous herdsmen–farmer conflicts to the Sahelian drought. This view is in agreement with that of Blench (Reference Blench1994: 197–213) with regard to Fulani herdsmen–farmer relations in Nigeria. Other writers (Ofuoku and Isife, Reference Ofuoku and Isife2009; Moritz, Reference Moritz2010) have argued that the introduction of irrigated farming and prolonged dry season months in the northern parts have combined to reduce pasture areas in the region and driven the herders to scour even the southern coastal areas for pasture and water. Such diminishing agricultural resources have necessarily acted to intensify conflicts between herders and farmers. In the Jos area of central Nigeria, the conflict attained such a significant dimension in 2004 that the state declared a state of emergency (IRIN, 2004). The conflict also exposed religious and ethnic differences as mediating factors in the resource access versus resource control dynamics: the herders had the backing of the Muslim faithful, while farmers had support from locals and Christians. Strikingly, while most of the herders are animists whenever a crisis erupts between the Moslem Fulani Gida and a third party, invariably the Bororo plunge into it for ethno-political reasons. This makes the herdsmen–farmer conflicts multi-causal and more complex than popular generalisations purport. In some instances, it seems to be an economic struggle, in others it appears to be engineered by ethnic or religious sentiments.
Higaz and Ali’s (Reference Higazi and Abubakar Ali2018) study on pastoralism and security in parts of West Africa and the Sahel acknowledges the complexity of the problem and suggests the need for further thorough field research on the matter, especially in the Middle Belt, South-East and South-West states. That challenge is part of what the present study is set to address. Their study did not, however, cover Benue State, the current hotbed of herdsmen–farmer conflicts in Nigeria.
Polly Hill (Reference Hill1972) discusses the symbiotic herdsmen–farmer relations that had existed in Hausaland when farmers provided open land to herders and herders’ cattle droppings helped to fertilise the soil for farmers. Hill’s characterisation of herdsmen–farmer relations is contradicted by the countless Fulani herders’ wanton depredations of the farms of sedentary peasants in many states in West Africa. Herdsmen depredations in Ghana became so traumatic, that a member of parliament (herein MP) thought it appropriate to order his afflicted constituents to kill any cattle that invade their farms (Network for Peace Building, 2014). The frustrated MP spoke for his people when he said:
We will not sit there for these Fulani herdsmen to use their cattle to destroy what we have used our hard earned money to establish. So, I am admonishing that if they come to your farm, shoot and kill them (Bokor, Reference Bokor Michael2014).
The MP spoke to mobilise his constituents against the herdsmen who went about the rural environment destroying lives and property. Azeez Olaniyan et al. (Reference Olaniyan and Okeke Uzodike2015: 53–67), however, believe that the instruction by the MP would escalate further the impasse between the herders and the farmers without the intended peaceful resolution. The herdsmen have been brutal in their search for grazing land, a situation that reminds a historian of the activities of the Vandals in southern Europe in early medieval times.
In Yoruba land, Fulani herders’ depredations reached such a frightful height that Frederick Fasehun, the leader of the Odua People’s Congress (OPC), a pan-Yoruba organisation, instructed his people to rise up and fight the herdsmen. This order followed the abduction of Chief Olu Falae, a former Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria (FirstAfricaNews, 2015). Many cases of herdsmen attacks (Table 1) were in response to allegations by herders that farmers had killed their cattle, which had ravaged their farms.
Some incidents of Herdsmen attacks in Nigeria, 2012–16
Source: Newspaper reportage of herdsmen attacks in Nigeria during the period and corroborated by fieldwork accounts taken in some of the places mentioned.
It is not in doubt that the herders and the sedentary farmers have the right to eke out a living. However, two issues arise. First, there is the question of where one’s rights end and another’s begin. The second is the fundamental issue of personal property rights. In a liberal capitalist economy, such as Nigeria, the right to private property is a fundamental human right. Herders’ invasion of the sedentary famers’ property (land) thus constitutes a grave assault on their established human right.
In sum, in interrogating the herdsmen–farmer conflicts in Nigeria, the following questions are pertinent: the root causes of the persistent herdsmen–farmer clashes; the values the herders attach to cattle and farmers, to land; how farmers and herders settled their disputes in times past; the social and economic costs of the confrontations; and a solution to recurring confrontations.
Theorising herdsmen–farmer clashes
Scholars have employed various theories to explain herdsmen–farmer clashes in Africa. Thomas Bassett (Reference Bassett and Turner2007) and M. D. Turner Bassett (Reference Bassett1988) employed the theory of herders’ migrations based on the herder’s notion of space and place. Rita Y. Barre (Reference Barre2012: 18–41) employed the theory of politics of space and power in explaining why the phenomenon has become a social dilemma in many West African countries. Ofuoku and Isife (Reference Ofuoku and Isife2009), Moritz (Reference Moritz2010), Kriesberg (Reference Kriesberg2007), Mitchell (Reference Mitchell1981) and Pruitt and Sung (Reference Pruitt and Kim2004), have employed the conflict theory to proffer possible resolution to the problem. However, the present study opts for the Patron-Client and Relative Deprivation theories as most apt for the Nigerian case.
The patron-client theory explains issues concerning competing factions within a given polity. Using Southeast Asia, as an example, Scott (Reference Scott1972: 91–113) describes the theory as
a special case of dyadic ties involving a largely instrumental friendship in which an individual of higher socioeconomic status (patron) uses his own influence and resources to provide protection or benefits, or both, for a person of lower status (client), who, for his part reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, including personal services, to the patron.
Often, there is an imbalance in the exchange between the client (the poor) and the patron, this imbalance reflecting the disparity in their relative wealth, power, influence and status. Allen (2011) and Schmidt (Reference Schmidt1977) view the relationship as an alliance between two persons of unequal status, power or resources, each of whom finds it useful to have as an ally someone superior or inferior. As Shoemaker and Spanier (Reference Shoemaker and Spanier1984) note, patron-client relationships are primarily aimed at enhancing the respective security of patron. The patron has three different but important goals that he wishes to pursue: ideology, international solidarity and strategic economic advantage. All these goals have been associated with herders in West Africa who in their quest for international ethnic solidarity and common transhumance ideology, seek more grazing lands and water bodies for their cattle in Nigeria. Literatures state that kinship and patronage networks were the primary building blocks for communities in both pre- and post-revolutionary Cambodia (Ledgerwood and Vijghen, Reference Ledgerwood, Vijghen and Ledgerwood2002; Nhean, Reference Nhean2010). As in Cambodia, so it is in some African states, as Berman (1988: 305–41) and Joseph (Reference Joseph1987) suggest, ‘even as they ritually denounce ”tribalism”, African politicians sedulously maintain ethnic networks of patronage that are the basis of their power’. Thus, the intersection of the literatures on patron-client theory is the benefit of the relationship for the client, which is often in response to envisaged freedom from hostility and inequality.
This study postulates that the herders’ patron-client alignment has made it possible for them (clients) to audaciously wield guns and wantonly destroy lives and property, with official connivance. This suspicion is popular among other Nigerian ethnic groups who blame the Fulani and some non-Fulani elites for patronising the herders who tend their cattle. The herders do not own cattle but make their livelihood by working for their patrons, who own most of the cattle and perhaps provide them the wherewithal to cow the landowners into acquiescence.
The study also views the herdsmen–farmer relations from the deprivation perspective because migrating herders prey on the meager environmental resources of their host communities. It refers to the recognition and the associated feelings that go with the denial of one group’s resources by another group. A group may see themselves from a wide variety of angles, including economic well-being, living standard, political power and social status. A wide variety of referents may be chosen when people make comparisons, including ideal standards, other persons, in-groups, or out-groups (Seepersad, Reference Seepersad2009: 12). The recognition of deprivation is referred to as cognitive relative deprivation while the associated feelings, such as disappointment, frustration and anger, are referred to as affective relative deprivation (Crosby and Hennigan, 1977; Dube and Guimond, Reference Dubé, Guimond, Olson, Herman and Zanna1986; Walker and Pettigrew, Reference Walker and Pettigrew1984: 301–10). Deprivation may be in relation to a group, which is referred to as fraternal relative deprivation (Runciman, Reference Runciman, Hyman and Singer1968: 69–76). Relative deprivation has been associated with revolutions and militancy (Abeles, Reference Abeles1976: 119–37; Davies, Reference Davies1962: 5–19; Mutran and Stryker, 1980: 191–213); crime (Baron, Reference Baron2004: 457–83; Mazerolle et al., Reference Mazerolle, Piquero and Capowich2003: 131–57; Rosenfield, Reference Rosenfeld, Byrne and Sampson1986: 116–30; Stiles et. al, Reference Stiles, Liu and Kaplan2000: 64–90), and anger (Mark and Cook, Reference Mark and Cook1979: 13–17). Both farmers and herders believe that they do not have what they deserve from the available natural resources. Thus, herders continue to resist eviction, believing that their cattle are entitled to pasture and water sources, whatever the right of the farmers who own the land. Thus, the struggle for land resources pitches them with daggers drawn against each other.
Right to graze vs right to farm
As noted, farmers’ and herders’ attempts to protect their respective interests in land and grazing fields constitute the crux of their mutual antagonism. Cattle-rearing societies in Africa (Nuer, Kikuyu, Maasai, Fulani, etc.) attach utmost much importance to their herds and live to protect them from extinction. As Evans-Pritchard (Reference Evans-Pritchard1953: 181–96) states:
All Nuer cattle are their great treasure, a constant source of pride and joy, the occasion also of much foresight, of much anxiety, and of much quarreling; and they are their intimate companions from birth to death.
This observation is also true of the Fulani cattle herders of Nigeria who have repeatedly gone to all lengths, including war, to protect their cattle. Al-Mustapha (Reference Al-Mustapha2016), a Fulani herder and Abass (Reference Abass2012: 331–46) related that:
Our herd is our life, because to every nomad, life is worthless without his cattle. What do you expect from us when our source of existence is threatened? The encroachment of grazing fields and routes by farmers is a call to war.
Sale Bayari, Chairman of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), shares the above view. He emphasised that:
Cattle are an ancestral and generational wealth. So, for a Fulani man the cattle (is) worth fighting for because without the cattle there is no life. And cattle are worth fighting for more than a mother, a wife or a child (Bayeri, Reference Bayeri2012: 50).
To the sedentary farmer – Igbo, Tiv or Idoma, for instance – land is an inalienable prized possession; the abode of his ancestors; the most important economic resource; an index of autochthony; and the final resting place (Chuku, Reference Chuku2005; Chubb, Reference Chubb1961; Bohannan and Bohannan, Reference Bohannan and Bohannan1968; Odey, Reference Odey2009).
As indicated earlier, before contemporary times, herdsmen–farmer conflicts were usually amicably settled through traditional conflict resolution mechanisms (Farouk Ahmed, Reference Ahmed2015). However, in recent times, a conjuncture of natural and human factors has raised herdsmen–farmer confrontations to heights that have rendered the traditional peaceful resolution mechanisms unworkable. First, desertification, arising from climate change and other human activity, has resulted in dwindling of pasture/grazing land and water sources, compelling the herders to range increasingly more southerly than before; at first to north central Nigeria and thence south-east, south-south and south-west geopolitical zones where sedentary farming is the modus (Tonah, Reference Tonah2006: 33–45). Second, rising human and cattle populations vis-à-vis static land size, urbanisation coupled with infrastructural developments have confounded the problem. As Emmanuel Onucheyo (2011) states:
The nomadic system was appropriate when human and animal populations were small and land was huge; just as the system of shifting cultivation was appropriate. But over the last couple of decades, populations of both have exploded, fallow periods have been drastically reduced and weather patterns changed.
Third, modern veterinary science means that cattle are no longer vulnerable to forest diseases. Thus herds are able to stay permanently in the forest area, contesting the use of dwindling water and land resources with local sedentary farmer communities. Fourth, the porosity of Nigerian borders has encouraged the easy entry of cattle herders from neighbouring countries, especially because of their physical and linguistic affinity with Nigerian Fulani herders. Incidentally, the ECOWAS Protocol provides for a ninety-day free movement and residence of citizens of member nations without a visa. The Fulani from Senegal, Niger, Chad, and Mali take advantage of this provision and bring their cattle down to Nigeria to graze and market.
The insecurity of the farms due to herders’ attacks has made farming precarious, imperilling food production, while the Fulani herders adoption of guerrilla tactics acts to create fear and anxiety on farmers and their local communities. The rise of ethnic politics and religious fanaticism has also tended to stiffen herdsmen–farmer prejudices. This ominous combination of factors has come starkly to the fore in Benue State. Relations between the herdsmen–farmer populations in Benue State go back to remote antiquity. An intern at the IDP camp in Zaki-Ibiam, recalled the following narrative of his grandfather:
In distant past, a group of herders were moving through a Tiv village when one of the cattle died. The villagers who begged to allow them to eat the dead cattle surprised the herders. The herders derogatively began to call the area Munchi (I will eat) and when the colonial masters came, they named the area, Munshi Province, not knowing that it was derogatory of the people (Tekrur, Reference Tekrur2016).
Munshi Province comprised many communities in Benue, Kogi and Plateau States of present day Nigeria. The area has been the hotbed of herdsmen–farmer contestations in recent times. On 7th July 2012, a number of herdsmen attacked Maseh community in Plateau State, killing about one hundred people. While the dead were being interred, the herders invaded the burial venue, killing many mourners, including Dalyop Dantong, a serving Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Hon. Gyang Fulani, a member of the Plateau State House of Assembly (Tajudeen, Reference Tajudeen2012: 49–50). In Benue State, the herders killed more than thirty farmers in a raid on Yogbo community on 14th October 2012. In Gwer LGA, the herdsmen invaded sixteen villages, wrecking havoc on both humans and property.
Surprisingly, in the face of the atrocities, the Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam, reportedly absolved the Fulani of any wrongdoing. Rather, it is said, he claimed, ‘we discovered that criminals are the ones attacking Benue communities, not Fulani herdsmen’ (Premium Times, 2013). Seemingly as if to prove the governor wrong, the herdsmen attacked his convoy going to inspect the extent of damage in Minda. The governor only narrowly escaped. Similarly, the Emir of Jere, Dr Usman Sa’had, following an attack by Fulani herdsmen early in 2014, spent months in a hospital.
Herdsmen–farmer conflicts have become a familiar occurrence in several Nigerian communities, especially since 1999, and have been jeopardising greatly the food and overall security of the nation. In 2015 Nigeria spent nearly $2.9 billion on domestic food importation and $4.1 billion in 2017 (BBC Africa Business, 2019). In 2018, the figure had spiralled to more than $22 billion, representing 10.93 per cent of total merchandise imports (World Bank, 2018). Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State argued that any effort to stem the tide of declining agriculture would be futile as long as herdsmen callously destroy farmers’ crops with impunity while government looks the other way (Premium Times, 2016). Fulani Gida in the army, police and other law enforcement agencies are suspected to be patrons of the herdsmen and consider the interests of their kins over those of other Nigerians. It is no sheer coincidence, then, that since 2015, the year Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani, became president of Nigeria, the Fulani herders have acted repeatedly in complete disregard of the law, with no official reprimands and no arrests.
Against the backdrop of government connivance, herders wielding AK-47s gunned down a serving senator in Plateau State. None of the herders was arrested; rather, the army disarmed the locals who owned only cutlasses and knives. The audacity with which the cattle herders have regularly pillaged other Nigerians with government acquiescence, thereby gives credence to the allegation that what has been going on is a replay of the nineteenth-century ‘Fulani jihad’, which was at once religious, ethnic, social and political. In order to secure grazing land for their cattle, the Fulani herdsmen have sacked whole communities, burned down their houses, raped their women, slaughtered many others and occupied their most priced heritage, their land. Fulani-Hausa bourgeoisie – both civilian and military – own the over twenty million cattle in Nigeria, valued in trillions of Naira. The herders make their peasant living through looking after the cattle, a typical patron-client arrangement.
Elite complicity
In the unending struggle between Fulani herders and sedentary farmers in the central and the southern parts of Nigeria, the traditional rulers are implicated over the central issue of land. While in the Emirates in northern Nigeria, the Emirs have authority over land matters, in the farming societies of central and southern Nigeria, land is communally owned. Though the head of the landowning unit/community holds the land in trust for his unit, he has no authority to rent the community land single-handedly to outsiders. However, in many of the communities, local chiefs, hands in glove with some elites, have breached this tradition and rented community lands to herders who approached them for permission to rent land to graze their cattle. Often, the herders make gifts of money and cattle to the chiefs and their accomplices for the permission sought and granted (Ogenyi, Reference Ogenyi2016).Footnote 2 Having secured the permission of the chiefs and of some of the elites, the herdsmen assume it their right to graze on the land agreed upon, and are ready to kill and maim anyone that challenges them. It is against this backdrop that Ramalan Giwa (Reference Ogenyi2016) indicted both the elite and traditional rulers for the clashes between farmers and herders in Nigeria; a view which Ahmed Shehu, a herder (Reference Ogenyi2016) corroborates.
Against this background, the northern patrons who own the cattle illegally provide their clients with AK-47 assault rifles with which they battle cattle rustlers and anyone challenging their presumed grazing rights. Further, because they occupy the highest echelons of the administrative, security and policymaking positions in Nigeria, they use those positions to provide official cover for the herdsmen’s atrocities. It is pertinent to observe that in Africa, boundaries are a thing of the heart, and herdsmen move through the bushes and forests and may never pass through border control posts for checks. Even then, the border control posts are usually manned by Fulani Gida kinsmen of herders who do not stop them from entering Nigeria.
Elite political interests have continued to influence the interpretation of government actions, which critics see as primordial and designed to placate a certain culture. As Adakole Idoko (Reference Idoko2016) relates, Fulani herders addicted to transhumance culture are yet to realise that twenty-first-century Nigerians may neither compromise their farms nor succumb to the intimidation of the herders. The proposal by the present Fulani-controlled Federal Government of Nigeria to establish grazing reserves in the country seems likely to set up a time bomb, given the polarised political setting of modern Nigeria. Southerners and Christians in general would have reasons to see it as a strategy to actualise the dream of the Sokoto Jihad to deepen the Koran in the Atlantic Ocean in the south (Ojukwu, Reference Ojukwu1969: 148).
Counting the cost
In Nigeria, the menace of herdsmen in different communities brings to mind the gory tales of the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur Region of Sudan, which informed guesstimates say, claimed over 460,000 lives and rendered over a million homeless (Aljazeera, 2013). Two studies that quantified the economic costs of the farmer–herder conflicts during the period, show that states affected lost 47 per cent of their internally generated revenue (IGR) and the average household would have experienced at least a 64 per cent increase in income, and potentially 210 per cent or higher increase in income, if these conflicts were reduced to near zero (Mercy Corps, 2015).
Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State gave a United Nations delegation the following breakdown of the material, human and economic tolls of the Fulani herdsmen depredations in his state during the period 2013–16: residents killed, 1,878; peoples missing, 200; individuals critically injured, 750; houses destroyed, in excess of 99,427. In 2014 alone, the estimated cost of destruction recorded across ten LGAs in the state exceeded N95bn (Ebhomele Eromosele, 2017). In addition, the state experienced abnormal food scarcity and expectedly an astronomical rise in food prices. For instance, a bag of maize, which used to cost
$$\rlap{--} N$$
5, 500 ($16) rapidly rose to between
$$\rlap{--} N$$
15, 000 ($42) and
$$\rlap{--} N$$
18, 000 ($50). An estimated 40 per cent of the rural dwellers, most of them farmers, fled their villages, abandoning their farms (Isa Sa’idu, Reference Sa’idu2017). By Patrick Okigbo’s (2016) calculation, peace between farmers and pastoralists could have produced a gain of up to $13.7 billion annually. Of the thirty-six states in the country, only three, Benue, Taraba, and Ekiti responded to this development by passing anti-open grazing laws prohibiting the open grazing of cattle.
The confrontations have had their tolls on the herdsmen, too. In a herdsmen–farmer clash in the Mambilla plateau area of Adamawa State, about one thousand herds and ten herders were killed. The thousand herds of cattle destroyed were estimated to be worth nearly $1 million (Ngelzarma, Reference Ngelzarma2016). It was against this backdrop that Baba Ngelzarma, General Secretary of MACBAN called for a lasting resolution of the various crises.
Apart from clashes with farmers over land and water resources, herdsmen have been implicated in kidnap, armed banditry and rape. In the first half of 2017, many cases of herdsmen engaged in rape were reported in some national dailies. Women who account for over 50 per cent of the farming population feared going to farm because of the herders. The implication of this situation for food availability and food security in Nigeria is easily predictable. Besides, by engaging in the above dastardly acts of moral and social depravity, the herders make it more problematic for their host communities to accept them as welcome guests.
The cases related in Table 1 represent the tip of the iceberg compared to reports of the ravages of the herdsmen in many rural communities in Nigeria. It needs to be stressed also that the above presentation of the cost of herdsmen–farmer clashes in Nigeria has concentrated mostly on its quantitative, economic and political aspects. Such unquantifiable impacts as psychological traumas, individual and collective agonies and the like, must have very telling effects on those who experienced the outrages. It can stand repetition to say that federal government response to the outrages has been nonchalant and sometimes openly compromising. If common criminals, masquerading as herdsmen, have committed illegalities, as some sources allege (Onwughalu and Obiora, Reference Onwughalu and Collins2017) this may be because of the government’s patronising stance to the herders.
The hand of Esau; the voice of Jacob
It is worth reiterating that herdsmen–farmer clashes are an age-long conflict and the disputants had ways of settling the palavers amicably. Since 1999, the political class seems to have infiltrated the two opposing interests and fuelled the contestations. Sheikh Dahiru Usman Bauchi (Reference Bauchi2018), an Islamic cleric, implied this when he said:
Fulani are not killers; Fulani are known to have sticks, bow, and arrow but you are saying the killers have guns. Who gave Fulani herdsmen gun? Fulani lived with people across the world, they live peacefully, why should they take up arms against the people they are living together with hundreds of years ago? The basic responsibility of every government is to protect life, to protect the shedding of blood, to protect human joints, to protect families, to protect and human dignity.
Because of the turbulent nature of the Nigerian political landscape, some politicians recruit hoodlums into their pay rolls to commit violent actions, to discredit a particular government or ethnic nationalities. Politicians of opposing parties use the hooligans, who disguise as herders and cattle hustlers, to cause mayhem in every part of the country (Akerjiir, Reference Akerjiir2018; Akiri, 2018).
Romance with bandits by people in official positions is usually a two-edged sword. Recently, some criminals who were arrested in connection with a bank robbery had pictures they took during a party with the senate president, Bukola Saraki. There were insinuations that some of the criminals were under the ‘protection’ of the senate president (Sahara Reporters, 2018). Today, highway robberies have been attributed to herdsmen. A victim of one robbery attack testified that, ‘the robbers spoke French’ (Okeke, Reference Okeke2017). This is implied as it has been difficult for the Police to go for the robbers and arrest them. Since the demise of the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Ghadafi, the security situation in Africa has changed for the worse. Dissident loyalists absconded with their rifles and have infiltrated into several African countries, including Nigeria, pretending to be herdsmen. Also, the political elite who own most of the cattle in Nigeria may have provided the AK-47 rifles to their political thugs, who disguise as herders and cause mayhem in many communities in Nigeria. This may explain why herdsmen nowadays are seen with AK-47 repeater rifles instead of clubs.
Conclusion
Kollock (Reference Kollock1998: 185) observes that ‘the compelling and perverse feature of these dilemmas is that there is no ambiguity about what one should do to benefit oneself, yet all are hurt if all follow this “rational” decision’. Herdsmen–farmer relations in Nigeria have become a social and economic dilemma with each side of the fence minding the immediate benefits, and feigning to be oblivious of the long-term losses to their neighbours. Herdsmen–farmer relations have been greatly politicised and have fanned the embers of most communal/ethnic violence in Nigeria. The prevailing tension may not be unconnected with the rising political unrest in Nigeria and the transfer of the same to the unsuspecting herders and farmers by the political elite, who blow the skirmishes out of proportion through hate speeches, and perhaps to discredit the Nigerian government presided over by a Fulani. Competition between the local population and herders over grazing land and water bodies has often been the immediate cause of crises. Herdsmen–farmer crises in Nigeria arise as a result of problems or differences between farmers and herders when herds graze on farm land and destroy crops. When such dispute was not resolved, it is often elevated to a group dispute orchestrated by killing and destruction of property. When this is exacerbated, the government often instituted a curfew and follows this by setting up a Commission of Inquiry who submit their findings afterwards. The ensuing reports have invariably been set aside and nobody prosecuted. This is arguably why most communities began to rely on non-state armed actors for protection. Official attitude to herdsmen activities in Nigeria tends to suggest that their patrons are in positions of power. It is the elite who own most of the cattle being herded across Nigeria and may have provided the herders with sophisticated weapons.
While Nigerians debate the actions of the herdsmen, a further critical inquiry about the ownership of the different herds of cattle in transhumance in Nigeria is also germane. Free-range grazing is no longer an acceptable practice. When ranches are established, it would complement crop farming by providing organic manure to increase soil fertility and drive biogas production as an alternative source of energy.
There are more than 570 million farms worldwide, most of which are small and family-operated (Lowder et al., Reference Lowder, Skoet and Raney2016: 16–29). In Nigeria, the average farm size has continued to decrease while the population that depends on it continues to grow. This dichotomy has raised contestations over land to unprecedented heights. Cattle herders’ invasion of poor sedentary farmers’ lands, the fons et origo of their existence, has triggered stiff resistance of the farmers. The scenario fits perfectly into Alfred Toynbee’s conflict theory, which states that a culture can expand only at the expense of other cultures. There can be two possible responses to the challenge of aggression. The victims of the aggression can seek accommodation with the aggressor or cling more tightly to their ancestral heritage. The herders’ aggressive and insatiable encroachment on farmers’ dwindling land to graze their cattle is at the centre of the disagreements. Africa is awash with struggles for natural resources and has become a victim of that malady variously termed ‘the tragedy of endowment’ (Alao, Reference Alao2007); ‘the new landscape of global conflict’ (Klare, Reference Klare2020) and ‘Conflict of Resources’ (Harsch, Reference Harsch2007). Discussion on herdsmen–farmer crises in Nigeria is an aspect of the general discourse on the on-going resource conflicts in Africa, coded variously in ethnic, religious and environmental hues. However, herdsmen–farmer clashes in Nigeria are rooted in resource control problématique, arising from environmental degradations.
The research has examined the cause of the herdsmen–farmer conflicts in Nigeria and the cost of the conflicts on the farmers and herders. A combination of natural and human factors explains the conflicts. The herders are mostly Muslims and Fulani, like the current president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari. Christians in Nigeria see the attacks as essentially religious and reminiscent of the Fulani Jihad of 1804. Some Nigerians have characterised the events as a form of ethnic cleansing (Ojukwu, Reference Ojukwu1969: 148). Some states have enacted anti-open grazing bills to stem the conflict; and in reaction, the herders have gone haywire in their attacks to demonstrate anti-compliance. Farmers and non-Fulani rejected the federal government proposed bill for establishment of the rural grazing areas (RUGA). However, the federal government’s compromising posture in relation to the cattle herders’ depredations tends to give credence to suspicions. Cattle herders need to be educated to recognise that their own (assumed) freedom must end where that of others begins. The cost of the conflicts has been incalculable, from the perspective of the agonies and traumas they have left in their wake. The ultimate solution to the recurring imbroglio is the introduction of a modern scientific cattle-rearing system, as is the vogue in modern economies the world over. This is not an impossibility, provided the political will exist.
Acknowledgements
We thank our interpreters, Messrs John Angbah and Kingsley Ochekwu, for translating from Tiv and Idoma to English, respectively, and Mallam Ibrahim Sa’aid and Yusuf Mohammed who translated Fulfulde to English for us during the fieldwork.
