TENSION is rising over the activities of Fulani herdsmen. Unrestrained, bloodthirsty and answerable to no one, Fulani nomads perpetrate robbery, rape, looting, killings, kidnapping and destruction of farmlands across the country. In September, they kidnapped Olu Falae, a former Minister of Finance, at his farm in Akure, Ondo State, released him days later, only to invade his farm again. Now that the nomads have graduated from carrying bows and arrows to wielding AK-47 assault rifles, we cannot ignore their barbarism any longer.
Pretending and evading the issue — as the Fulani elite and the northern governors have been doing — is doing great damage to national cohesion. From the Middle Belt to the South, resentment is mounting against the hegemonic culture of these herdsmen. President Muhammadu Buhari, his incoming agriculture and defence ministers and the security chiefs should provide a solution because this niggle has the potential to become an internecine war if not properly handled.
The herdsmen have killed too many people. They are baying for the blood of innocent farmers and villagers. As of August, Fulani herdsmen had killed 621 persons. Benue State, the epicentre of this madness, has suffered the highest number of casualties. In January, 27 people lost their lives; 96 in February, while March recorded 236 deaths.
Other flashpoints are in Kogi, Nasarawa, Ekiti, Plateau, Taraba, Kaduna, Delta, Oyo, Ogun, Osun and Kwara states. The impunity of the nomads is insufferable. In a poignant case in 2014, Fulani herdsmen attacked the convoy of Gabriel Suswam, then the governor of Benue State, just after they had sacked some Benue villages. They engaged the security team of the governor in a ferocious gunfight before they were overpowered. Why have we continued to treat the menace of the herdsmen with levity, knowing their capacity for fatalities?
The bone of contention is land. The Fulani, constrained by dwindling grazing land in the North, herd their cattle openly, moving them to other parts of the country for grazing. Grazing constitutes a problem to local farmers, whose crops are savaged by cattle. Many farmers have gone bankrupt after seeing their investment destroyed by the cattle. The Fulani, who also claim that the locals steal their animals, sometimes commit rape and robbery. In July 2012, they killed a retired Nigerian Army Brigadier-General, Sylvester Iruh, on the long bridge on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
The attitude of Miyetti Allah – the umbrella union of herders – which believes that “land belongs to all Nigerians,” and the seeming complicity of the police, who shy away from arresting and prosecuting the vicious herdsmen, are likely to exacerbate the crisis. Unfortunately, since 1999, the government has not given much thought to solving the problem. The half-hearted effort by the parliament to find a solution is wrongheaded in that it seeks to create grazing routes and grazing reserves in all parts of the country. This should be discarded.
But how do we get out of the logjam? In Nigeria, simple issues are never decisively addressed until they snowball into grave conflicts. Open herding is the main problem, but other nations had provided a solution to this long ago. As far back as 1874, United States cattle owners, after admitting the damaging clashes between them and farmers, introduced ranching, which is the practice of raising herds of animals on large tracts of land. Today, the US leads the world in livestock production with 89.8 million heads of cattle (2015).
Other countries have adopted ranching, achieving excellent results. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says cattle-rearing is “a strong part of the Australian economy,” and puts the figure of cattle in the country at 29.3 million heads. The country has the world’s largest ranch – the Anna Creek, which covers 24,000 square kilometres. According to the AHDB, a British not-for-profit, there are 23.4 million heads of cattle in the European Union (2013). In Argentina, ranches also serve as tourist attractions, while the Diamond A. Ranch in New Mexico, US, additionally operates a major project to preserve 700 species of plants, 75 mammals, 50 reptiles and amphibians, and more than 170 species of breeding birds. Indeed, the ranching and livestock industry is said to be growing faster than any other agricultural sector in the world.
For Nigeria to maximise its livestock industry and stop the clashes between herdsmen and farmers, we have to end the obsolete, uneconomic practice of open herding of cattle. Nigeria has 19 million heads of cattle. With this figure, the country is supposed to be a major global player. We are not; but we can drive our dairy, beef, leather and wool industry and generate exports by restructuring our cattle and livestock sector through ranching.
We are stuck in this rut because of our inability to end our obsolete herding practices, see the big picture and think things through, which is regrettable. Some of our elite have also politicised the issue. But open herding is a recipe for disaster, violence, injustice and ethno-religious conflagration. With Boko Haram terrorism and militancy still raging in the North and South, sound economics and politics dictate that a fresh source of instability should not be tolerated. Open herding can lead to the resurgence of ethnic militias, who are likely to fight the cause of their ethnic groups in the face of Fulani herdsmen’s onslaught.
Our governments – especially at the centre and in the states in the North – have to do better. Way back in 1965, a policy to establish ranches in Nigeria had been enunciated. Governors in the North should dust off the document and improve on it, while southern states’ governors should mobilise resources to jointly check the invaders.
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