Friday, 29 April 2016
Cattle Herdsmen As The New Boko Haram?
“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-power mentality 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 labelling 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.
BY REUBEN ABATI
MY EMAIL- rachelizuoguonah1@gmail.com
rachele20022002@yahoo.com
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