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By Emeka Nwosu
IN recent times, the lingering conflicts involving pastoralists and farmers in Nigeria have assumed a very dangerous dimension. The situation has become
so perilous to the extent that the fragile unity of the country is being seriously threatened. The dominant issues in the news all over the country today, unfor- tunately, border on unrelenting cases of brutal killings, rape and kidnapping by marauding herdsmen who illegally graze their animals on farmlands belonging
to various indigenous communities and farmers. The situation has become a deadly scourge that no part of Nigeria is spared.
The point must be made here that herder-farmer clashes are not a new phe- nomenon in the country. The problem has been with us for much of our nation- hood, even if muted. But in the last six years, under the watch of President Mu- hammadu Buhari, the crisis has become intractable with enormous potential of throwing the country into avoidable na- tional tragedy, if no immediate steps are taken to find a lasting solution to it.
There is the need for a proper contextualization of the phenomenon
to have a better understanding of this potential time bomb that poses huge existential threats to the sovereignty of the nation. The issue of climate change has been identified as the key driver of this conflict in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, where the herder-farmer clashes have become endemic. Due to climate change, once arable lands in the north- ern fringes of our country and elsewhere in the Sahel have become scorched and attenuated by desertification, forcing nomads to migrate southwards in search of greener pastures and water for their animals.
Lake Chad in the northeastern part of our country, which is shared by Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroun and Central African Republic, presents a vivid illus- tration of the threat that climate change has posed, and continues to pose, to the environment and economic livelihood
of the people. As a result of the effects of climate change, Lake Chad has shrunk to one-third of its size. This has displaced millions of people within and around the Lake Chad basin who depended on the lake and its aquatic resources for survival.
The movement of the pastoralists to the South in search of grazing pastures and water for their animals brings them into conflicts with farming communi- ties on whose lands they illegally and sometimes violently trespass to feed their herds. The indigenous farmers and communities would naturally resist the offensive actions of the herders. And this usually elicits unbridled violence and bloodshed by the herdsmen who believe that they have unchallenged right to enter and graze in any available land.
The ugly situation has taken a horrify- ing dimension with the weaponization of the herdsmen who carry on with an air of arrogance and invincibility. They openly display assault rifles like AK-47 and other sophisticated weapons with which they commit mayhem against farmers and indigenous communities that oppose the destruction of their farmlands and property.
The deadly weapons in the hands of these marauding herdsmen are believed to have been smuggled in from Libya and other ungoverned spaces in the Sa- hel into the country through our porous borders. Libya has been locked in a civil war since the killing of the country’s leader, Col. Muammar Gadaffi 10 years
Akeredolu
ago. The war in Libya attracted mer- cenaries and terrorists from different parts of Africa, but particularly Islamic militants from the Sahel region.
These jihadists who are robed in de- ceptive languages as bandits and rustlers are believed to have taken advantage
of the open border policy of the Buhari administration to move into Nigeria in their numbers and have infiltrated the genuine herders. It is these battle-hard- ened mercenaries that are now masquer- ading as herdsmen. In addition to these mercenaries, there are also the roguish foreign elements from neighbouring countries who have taken advantage of the ECOWAS Protocol to freely breach our borders. These vagrants who are armed to the teeth are fingered for most of the atrocities by herdsmen in the Middle Belt and southern parts of the country, including killings, rape, land grabbing, destruction of farmlands and
kidnapping for ransom.
Only recently, Governor Akeredolu of
Ondo State ordered the killer herds- men to vacate the state’s forest reserves, which they, the herdsmen, have turned into cattle settlements and haven for kidnapping and rape. The governor’s di- rective was deliberately twisted by some sections of the elite and media in the North to give the impression that Gover- nor Akeredolu was asking all the Fulani in Ondo State and elsewhere in the South to quit. There is also the issue of the campaign by citizen Sunday Igboho to rid Oyo, Ogun and other parts of the South-West of killer herdsmen who have become a pain in the neck of the people. The destruction of farmlands, killings, kidnapping and rape have been the same story in the eastern part of the country, where the South-East governors recently announced a ban on open grazing.
Amid the din of cacophonous threats from the North and undisguised support for the herdsmen by the government at the centre, there appears to be a new and reassuring voice of reason as the northern governors made a U-turn a few days ago by agreeing with the rest of the country that open grazing was no longer fashionable and sustainable. They are now calling on the herdsmen to embrace ranching, which is global best practice, and discard the archaic culture of roam- ing around bushes and farmlands with their animals. This is a welcome devel- opment. The governors should go a step further to provide ranching facilities for the herders in the North, which boasts of two-thirds of the landmass of Nigeria.
The herder-farmer crisis would have been conclusively addressed, if there was a sincerity of purpose on the part of the Buhari-led Federal Government. Rather, what we have seen is a presidency that, through its actions and body language, has given confidence to herdsmen to become more audacious and daring in their conduct. The killer herdsmen have been rated by the World Terrorism Index as the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world after ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. But the Buhari administra- tion, which was quick to brand IPOB,
a self-determination entity, a terrorist group, has continued to turn a blind eye to the atrocities of herdsmen. Rather, they have been telling the victims of the killer herdsmen to try to find accom- modation with them, if they, the farming communities, must enjoy any relative peace in their ancestral homelands.
Instead of frontally confronting the herdsmen’s menace and calling them
to order, the Buhari government has been toying with some policy initiatives aimed at pampering the herdsmen and cleverly advancing the hidden political and cultural interests of the Fulani in Ni- geria. Such initiatives include the RUGA
settlements, which seek to distribute Fulani herders across the country, and cattle colonies meant to carve out exclusive reserves for the maraud-
ing herdsmen, also across the nation. Other initiatives include the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) and the Inland Waterways Bill, which is pending before the National Assembly. While the NLTP is seen as a rebranded name for RUGA, the Inland Waterways Bill is widely perceived as a subtle effort on the part of the Federal Government to hijack lands of communities along the waterways for the Fulani herds- men. The bill reportedly seeks to confer on the Federal Government exclusive ownership of lands within the radius
of 6km. A lot of Nigerians are nervous, especially the indigenous communities in the South who live along the banks of the inland rivers, that their land may be alienated by the Federal Government for the actualization of the RUGA agenda. A recent position paper by the Middle Belt Forum stated that all these policies, no matter how they are couched, are mainly for land grabbing.
Given the tension that the flagrant actions of the herdsmen have generated across the land, there are widespread fears that the country may be sliding into avoidable war and anarchy. It is, there- fore, incumbent on the Federal Gov- ernment to apprehend the dangerous situation in which the country has found itself. The primary responsibility of any government in the world is the security and welfare of the people. President Bu- hari must rise to the challenge and prove himself a leader for all Nigerians and not for any particular ethnic group; after all, he took an oath to defend and protect the people of Nigeria, irrespective of their ethnicity and religion.
He should put a stop to all the divisive policies his government has been pursu- ing, which have elicited outcries from the indigenous communities in the Middle Belt and South. Political analysts are of the opinion that, if the authorities do not habour any hidden agenda, there should be no justifiable reason for gov- ernment to be seeking to create exclu- sive settlements for herders across the country, instead of encouraging them to embrace ranching and restricting their activities to the North, where land is in great abundance.
The first step towards the resolution of the crisis is for President Buhari to come up with executive orders banning open grazing and enforcing the laws on illegal possession of firearms. Interest- ingly, some northern governors like Abdullahi Ganduje and Nasir El-Rufai of Kano and Kaduna States, respec- tively, have mapped out massive lands in their domains for cattle ranching. Other northern governors should follow suit. The Federal Government should encourage the governors in this regard to facilitate the relocation of herders to the ranches.
The foreign herdsmen among the no- mads should be fished out and returned to their countries with a follow-up ac- tion on the amendment of the relevant ECOWAS Protocol on Transhumance to put a permanent stop to cross-border grazing by these ruthless invaders.
If President Buhari fails to do the needful, the brewing tension arising from the growing atrocities of the ma- rauding herders may plunge the country into an avoidable calamity. This is the time to act.
•Dr. Nwosu, former political editor of the Daily Times, writes from
