"No matter how far
the town, there is another beyond it" – Fulani Proverb
There has been so much emotionalism developing around the
subject of the recent clashes between nomadic pastoralists and farmers, and the
seeming emergence of the former as the new Boko Haram, forbidding not Western
education this time, but the right of other Nigerians to live in peace and
dignity, and to have control over their own geographical territory. From Benue,
to the Plateau, Nasarawa, to the South West, the Delta, and the Eastern parts
of the country, there have been very disturbing reports of nomadic pastoralists
killing at will, raping women, and sacking communities, and escaping with their
impunity, unchecked, as the security agencies either look the other way or
prove incapable of enforcing the law. The outrage South of the Sahel is
understandable. It is argued, rightly or wrongly, that the nomadic pastoralist
has been overtaken by a certain sense of unbridled arrogance arising from that
notorious na-my-brother-dey-powermentality and the assumption that
“the Fulani cattle” must drink water, by all means, from the Atlantic ocean.
It is this emotional ethnicization of the crisis that should
serve as a wake up call for the authorities, and compel the relevant agencies
to treat this as a national emergency deserving of pro-active measures and responses.
It is not enough to issue a non-committal press statement or make righteous
noises and assume that the problem will resolve itself. Farmer-pastoralist
conflict poses a threat to national security. It is linked to a number of
complex factors, including, power, history, citizenship rights and access to
land. Femi Fani-Kayode in a recent piece has warned about Nigeria being “on the
road to Kigali”, thus referring to the genocide that hobbled Rwanda in the 90s
as the Hutus and the Tutsis drew the sword against each other. Fani-Kayode
needs not travel all the way to Rwanda. Ethnic hate has done so much damage in
Nigeria already; all we need is to learn from history and avoid repeating the
mistakes of the past.
Ethnic hate, serving as sub-text to the January 1966 and
July 1966 coups, for example, set the stage for the civil war of 1967 -70. The
root of Igbo-Hausa/Fulani acrimony can be traced back to that season when Igbos
were slaughtered in the North, the Hausa/Fulani were slaughtered in the East
and Nigeria found itself in the grip of a “To Thy Tents, O Israel” chorus.
Ethnic hate also led to the Tiv riots, crisis in the Middle Belt since then,
and the perpetual pitching of one ethnic group against the other in Nigeria’s
underdeveloped politics. We should be careful.
We need to remind ourselves that the current friction
between the pastoralists and their farming host communities is one of such
potential factors that can further tear the nation apart. Nigeria cannot afford
a second civil war, or mass-scale genocide. Today, every other Nigerian is
afraid either of the Boko Haram or the nomadic pastoralist. It is not
likely that the populations south of the Sahel will continue to stand idly by
and allow herdsmen to trample upon their lands, destroy their crops, kill, maim
and rape and then get away with it. A resort to self-help such as occurred in
1966, could have serious national security implications. With the economy in
crisis, with anger in the land, and the people feeling disappointed, we cannot
afford any evil trigger to deepen the nation’s woes. So, the state cannot
afford to be aloof or indifferent.
Nomadic pastoralism is at the heart of the Fulani cultural
lifestyle, and that is why there has been so much labeling of the Fulani in the
emerging narrative, whereas the violent herdsmen certainly do not represent
Fulani interest. For centuries, the Fulani, living across West Africa, have
herded cattle from one part to the other, across borders. In Nigeria, the
migration is seasonal or cyclical: as the dry season begins in the North, the
herdsmen travel with their livestock down south in search of pasture and water,
and to avoid seasonal diseases. After about six months, with the onset of the
rainy season and farming in the South, they travel back to the North. Along the
route, they sometimes settle down, develop a relationship with the farming
communities and function as transhumance pastoralists, in fact, many herders
used to pay homage to the local hosts, but over time, the politics of power,
identity, and access to land as well as differences in culture, lifestyle and
religion began to cause friction. It is an old problem that has gotten worse as
the sedentary farmers whose land is violated by the nomads complain and the local
power elite who are soon displaced by the settling nomad fight back in protest,
thus creating a relationship fuelled by fear and mutual suspicion.
The new phenomenon of the nomadic pastoralist now behaving
as a conquering group of invaders, ready to inflict terror, and not ready to
ask for permission for land use, is where the big problem lies. The
bigger problem perhaps is the refusal of the nomadic pastoralist to give up an
old tradition that has become antiquated in modern times, or perhaps in urgent
need of modernization and reform. And to insist on that old mode on the
grounds that the life of a cow is more important than that of a human being is
worse than the Boko Haram phenomenon. There are Nigerians, including the
Fulani, who consider the lives of human beings far more important. Even if
there is an ironic interdependence between the pastoralist and the farmer: both
provide food, both trade with each other, the farms provide grass and crop
fodder, the cattle provide manure: the disruption of this economic
interdependence and its replacement by fierce competition for space, power and
resources is the source of the present tragedy.
The politicization of the relationship between the
pastoralist and the farmer as an extension of national politics, and the
failure of Nigeria’s leadership elite, is part of it. Most of the herdsmen
making the long seasonal or cyclical journey North to South and back, now
wielding sophisticated guns, with rounds of ammunition, are actually hired
economic agents. The real herdsmen are big men in high places; the ones with
the resources to buy herds of cattle, and hand over guns to their boys on the
roads of Nigeria. That is the source of the arrogance, the impunity, and the
meanness of the herdsmen. That is why you’d find herdsmen with cattle and goats
on major expressways and no security agent will stop them. It is also why they
go to the airports and actually herd cattle across the runway.
A few years ago, there was a head-on collision between a cow
and an aircraft at the Port Harcourt International Airport. Rather than get the
herdsmen arrested, airport staff, including the security agents on duty were
busy scrambling for a share of free meat. The people to talk to are those men
in high places, and this includes an emerging crowd of non-Fulani investors in
the cattle-rearing business (yes!), whose support and acquiescence allows this
kind of madness to happen in 21st Century Nigeria.
There used to be in Northern Nigeria, a Grazing Reserves
Law. Grazing Reserves were created across the North, but these were not
maintained and later, the big men converted the reserves to plots of land and
shared them out. To avoid the clash with farming communities in the
South, those reserves can be created afresh in the 19 Northern states. More
ranches and farms for livestock production and management should also be
established. There is no need for National Grazing Reserves, which would bring
the nomadic pastoralist into worse conflict with other communities insisting on
their right to land in their geographical territory. Nomadism may have been a
way of life for centuries, but we are in the 21st Century and
there are better ways to manage livestock. The argument that nomadic
pastoralism is cultural is on all fours with that equally silly argument that
child marriage is cultural. Certain things just must change if society must
make progress.
One of the original reasons the pastoralist goes to the
South with his cattle is desert encroachment and the lack of pasture during
certain periods of the year. What makes the life of the herder worse is global
warming and climate change: the seasons have become unpredictable and the life
of the nomad has become riskier than ever. This was a foreseeable problem; hence,
for years, Northern governments spoke about afforestation, irrigation projects,
and the urgent need to check the menace of desertification. Obviously, managers
of the project seemed to have been more interested in money and
contracts. Rather than think ahead and provide pasture for livestock, a
major element in the agricultural business of the North, the leaders chose to
provide pasture for their own stomachs. They have in the end turned what could
have been managed with vision into a nightmare for the rest of Nigeria.
One way forward is for Government to takes steps to
sedentarize the nomads. In many parts of Africa, climate change and the
transition to a modern way of life have turned many nomads into
agro-pastoralists, spending more time farming than moving up and down as the
elements and the herds dictate. Herdsmen are usually young men, and children.
They probably would be of better value to society if they are encouraged to go
to school, and not sentenced to a life of risk and violence. Insisting on the
establishment of ranches and farms and more sustainable and modern methods of
livestock management will also rescue many of those children who are recruited
as nomads so early and place them on the path of a more productive future.
The story of the gun-totting herdsmen should also draw
attention to the proliferation of small arms and ammunition. Our borders are
porous allowing herdsmen from across West Africa to enter Nigeria unchecked,
wielding dangerous weapons, left-overs from wars in Mali and Libya. Border
controls must become stricter, and Nigeria should take a more serious interest
in the ECOWAS Convention on small arms and light weapons. The cost of
negligence in this regard is to be measured by the frightening number of persons
that have been killed by herdsmen since January 2016 alone. The herdsmen must
be stopped; impunity must be punished not condoned. Every step should be taken
to prevent a slide into anarchy.
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