The search for grazing fields, which has turned Fulani herdsmen into guerrilla fighters, spreading terror and fear among farming communities in the country, is also generating an uproar in the National Assembly
Aliyu Bello, 26, son of a Fulani herdsman in Bachit Village, Riyom Local Government, LG, area of Plateau State is an unusual herdsman. Dressed in a faded pair of trousers and shirt and a knitted cap that covers part of his face, the young herdsman appears to be at home in the lonely jungle of Miango Forest in the Bassa LG area of the state. Though he claims to be a graduate of Law from the University of Jos, awaiting call to the Bar, nothing in his appearance suggests that he has seen the four walls of a higher institution. Cuddling the Fulani stick called sanda, Bello runs after some of the cows that are attempting to stray from the herd, shouting in a language the herd seems to understand.
He is one of the 46 children sired by his father and he chose to go to school “to see whether education would help us. I am still basically a herdsman.” Speaking in halting English, he blamed his inability to go to law school on the “Berom (that) killed all our cows and my parents could not raise money for me to go to law school this year.” As he fielded questions from TELL reporter, he created the image of scores of budding herdsmen who go on short trips for days and weeks in search of grazing land for the cattle. They are older than the young Turks who set out at 7 am each day and return to the village by sundown.
The village, like Maranraba located on the hills of Rukuba on the outskirts of Jos, only provides the resting place for the old parents, their women, and kids who unlike Bello are too weak to frequently move the cattle around for grazing. Maranraba is linked with an earthen road that links Miango by footpath. There are just about four households, where every family has at least three huts – one for the head of the family, one for the wives and one for the children. Shekariah Haruna, 45, said he had lived there for 10 years, after relocating from Miango, following an attack on them by angry locals.
He used to go out with his young sons to graze the cattle. But now he stays back at home and allows his eldest sons to herd the cattle. Only two of his nine children go to a local primary school about three kilometres away. He said he could not put all of them in school because no one would graze the cattle, which is the family business. The villagers have also benefited from the GSM revolution in the country, as it has helped them keep in touch with their families anywhere they are. Almost every adult in the village has a cell phone, and Haruna said if any of his children grazing the cattle is in danger in the bush, he would call and he (Haruna) would act immediately.
“I will call the soldiers if anything happens because they gave us numbers to call if anyone attacked us or our cows. There is nothing else I can do except to report to the military people to help us recover our cows. In some villages, herdsmen and their families have been killed and their cattle taken away. But we have not been attacked in this village, and we don’t pray for trouble. We love our neighbours and they love us,” he said softly, with a smile on his face.
Haruna and the few men in the village looked harmless and did not cut the image of gun-wielding, dare-devil people who have terrorised farmers in Plateau, Benue, Nassarawa, Kogi and other parts of the country. Yet farmers in these states swear that their attackers were Fulani herdsmen, some of who had lived with them for years. In places where there have been conflicts, farmers who have been at the receiving end suspect that the herdsmen use their telephones to mobilise their kinsmen against the farmers.
Markus Dailing, a Berom farmer who said he witnessed what he called “genocide” against his people by Fulani herdsmen on Saturday, July 7, 2012 at Maseh Village in Riyom LG, alleged that he saw the herdsmen who lived in neighbouring villages shoot with AK-47 rifles. He said the residents were getting ready to go to the farm in the morning when they started hearing gunshots from all directions. “The gunshots appeared to be a signal because soon all the Fulani in the village and surrounding hills, numbering close to 200, invaded Maseh with sophisticated weapons. They laid siege (to the village while) shooting and cutting our people with machetes. We saw the Fulani around us doing the attack. We know them even by their names because many of them were born and brought up among us. They know us and we know them.”
Dailing alleged that the Fulani killed 64 people in the village, including 46 people who ran into a pastor’s house for safety. The Fulani allegedly attacked again the next day when the victims were being buried. The surprise attack led to the death of Dalyop Dantong, a serving senator, and Gyang Fulani, a member of the state House of Assembly. Recently, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on Riyom LG area following violent clashes between Fulani and local farmers, which claimed three lives in some villages.
But no state has suffered more devastation from suspected herdsmen than Benue, where bloody clashes between farmers and herdsmen have become regular. Tiv farmers in Guma LG area, who witnessed renewed hostilities between herdsmen and farmers last week, narrated gory tales of mindless killing. No fewer than 30 people were reportedly killed during an alleged Fulani raid on Yogbo Village. Kondu Bawan, a farmer who escaped the attacks on Yogbo Village on Sunday October 14, spoke to the magazine in Makurdi. “It was around 9 am when people were already in their churches, the Fulani entered Yogbo Village and started killing our people and burning our houses. I had to run to Makurdi with the surviving members of my family. Two of my family members were killed by the Fulani.” He lamented that aside from the dead and the wounded, such attacks often bring untold hardship to the people. Hear him: “This is the time for me to make ridges for the next planting season, but I cannot go home, my children cannot go to school, because there is no money to take care of them.” Earlier in the year, suspected herdsmen invaded about 16 villages in Gwer LG of the state, allegedly killing men, women and children and burning houses and properties of the residents.
Herdsmen have carried their belligerence to faraway villages in Oyo, Ogun, Enugu and Imo states where clashes with farmers have also become frequent. Last May, schools in several farming villages in Yewa North LG area of Ogun State were deserted out of fear of attack by Fulani. Suspected herdsmen were said to have invaded the villages of Ibeku, Asa, Agbon and others, destroying farm crops and killing farmers who dared to protest.
Salihu Salami, a farmer at Ilora Farm Settlement in Afijio LG area of Oyo State, said herdsmen regularly invade the farm with sophisticated guns and machetes while trying to get their cows to the grazing land. He said the community was living in fear because cattle rearers threaten their lives. That is not the only area where the herdsmen have created fear in the people. There has been unease in most states that fall on the route of the herdsmen. The result is a buildup of tension in most of the affected places. For instance, youths in Ishi Ozalla, Enugu State, clashed with herdsmen last July for allegedly destroying crops, while in Imo State, scores of women and youths barricaded the busy Owerri–Portharcourt federal highway to protest the invasion of farms in some villages in Ohaji/Egbena council area.
But why are the herdsmen on the rampage? Why have clashes between farmers and herdsmen become recurrent? The answer, many would readily say, is grazing of cattle on farmlands. Farmers accuse Fulani cattle rearers of grazing animals on their farms, in the course of which the animals trample on the crops, thus destroying the hope of the farmers to reap from their sweat. However, when farmers call for restraint or protest, they allege that the herdsmen react by killing them. For instance, Bawan claimed that the attack on Yogbo Village was a protest against a court case won against the Fulani by some farmers in the village. He said the Fulani, who lived amongst them, started releasing their cattle to graze on their farms in April 2011, thereby destroying their farms. It became a subject of litigation and the farmers were awarded damages.
But Haruna, who told the magazine that farmers had killed many of his fellow herdsmen and their families, explained that farmers were always the cause of trouble. “We have routes for grazing our cattle but problem always arises when we move with our cattle and find that someone has blocked the route by putting a farm there. Some of the farmers would start attacking you and the animals,” he explained in Hausa.
He alleged that “the worst” is that some farmers and youths, especially in Benue and Plateau, were fond of attacking them and slaughtering their cows for consumption and sale in the markets. He said two of his relatives in Plateau have lost at least 40 cows in the last six months. Although Haruna said if anyone killed his cow he would not do anything but report to the authorities, those familiar with herdsmen argue that they don’t forgive anyone who kills their cows. In the North, it is widely believed that Fulani men value their cattle more than human life and would readily declare war on anyone who tampers with their cow.
This view was confirmed by Sale Bayari, National Secretary, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, who explained that lack of designated grazing fields for herdsmen and what he described as the “long throats” (greed) of some who appropriate and slaughter Fulani cows for consumption were the major causes of hostilities between herdsmen and their host communities. While they slug it out in the fields with farmers, there is an attempt in the Senate to enact a law creating a National Grazing Reserve Commission, grazing reserves and stock route across the country. The Senate joint committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and States and Local Government Administration had noted in its report last July that “existing Grazing Reserves Laws are incompatible with the general scheme of the Land Use Act. The mode and procedure of acquisition, payment of compensation and tenure of land under the Grazing Reserve Laws are inconsistent with what the Land Use Act provides.” It therefore recommends: “The passage of this Bill will provide the necessary legal backing for the operation of the Commission.”
Bayari, who spoke in an interview with the magazine, said increasing desertification, erosion, and periodic drought expansion in cropping activities in the far northern states of the country have led to scarcity of grazing fields. The result is that herdsmen have been pushing towards the South, with many of them settling in rural communities in Plateau, Benue, Nassarawa, Kaduna and Kogi states because of better conditions. This, he said, had inevitably led to increased clashes between farmers and herdsmen.
Since the late 1980s, recurring conflicts between farmers and herdsmen have been recorded in Jigawa, Katsina, Enugu, Kogi, Kwara, Benue, Taraba, Yobe, Adamawa, Gombe, Oyo, Ogun, Kaduna and Plateau states. Although there are no readily available official statistics, the clashes are believed to have resulted in massive loss of lives on both sides. In the process, animals, farm products and properties worth billions of naira have been lost. In 1990, Nigeria was said to have about 88 million hectares of arable land, out of which only about 34 million hectares were under cultivation. Now more lands are being cultivated as government continues to promote agriculture in the country. The result is that pasture would continue to dwindle for cattle.
The Third National Development Plan of 1975–1980 proposed to acquire 22 million hectares of land for the purpose of establishing grazing reserves in northern Nigeria alone. But to date, only about 433 grazing reserves were proposed for establishment in the whole country, covering about 2.84 million hectares. Not only that, over 80 per cent of these reserves have not been gazetted and more than half of it has been taken over by farmland. What this implies is that some agency had been handling the issue of grazing before now. That would therefore make the creation of National Grazing Commission unnecessary, particularly at a time the federal government is under pressure to reduce the number of departments and agencies so as to cut down on the cost of running government.
The Fulani, according to Bayari, has found himself in a situation where he has to look for pasture for his cattle or face extinction. “This is the current predicament of millions of Fulani pastoral families throughout northern Nigeria,” he told the magazine. That, perhaps, is the problem that the bill before the Senate seeks to solve. But, like the cat and mouse relationship between the farmers and the herdsmen, the bill created schism in the Senate.
Despite the inevitability of clashes with farmers in the search for pasture by the Fulani and the recurring violence, government has done little to resolve the problems. As a matter of fact, the parties in the conflict insinuate that the clashes continue because they have lost hope of getting reprieve from the authorities, including law enforcement agencies whenever they report an assault. They therefore resorted to helping themselves. The much concern that states and local government authorities in affected states have demonstrated is more populist in nature, rather than tackling the problem head-on. In some cases, most of them appear more concerned with their own political survival than caring about lives of people in the rural areas.
However, Gabriel Suswan, governor of Benue state, is one of the few public officers who have demonstrated genuine concern in tackling the problem. He could not have done less with the recurrent clashes between Tiv and Fulani in the state. His last major effort was the two-day peace meeting he called on May 25 this year. Hundreds of Tiv and Fulani leaders were invited to Makurdi to deliberate on the way forward. The Tor Tiv, the state commissioner of police, the state director of State Security Service, SSS, and the commanding officer of the Nigerian Army in Makurdi attended. Sa’ad Abubakar, Sultan of Sokoto, led some emirs to the meeting. He got a commitment from the leadership of the cattle rearers that they would stop their attacks while the Tor Tiv and Suswan warned the Tiv against killing cows owned by the Fulani.
Tanko Almakura, the governor of Nassarawa State, and Suswan, inaugurated joint committees to ensure peaceful co-existence among farmers and herdsmen in the two states. The Benue State government also procured motorbikes for the patrol of the border communities where most of the clashes usually occur. But Suswan’s effort at stemming the Fulani/Tiv clashes has not stopped the violence, and the situation may be getting even more precarious. Whenever there is a clash these days, the shots are no longer from Dane guns but from AK-47s and other sophisticated guns. The Samson Osagie Committee of the House of Representatives, which visited affected communities in Benue and Nassarawa States in March this year, deplored the use of sophisticated weapons by the Fulani and the farmers. The committee recommended among other things that the SSS should investigate the source of the arms deployed in the crisis.
But why has the crisis persisted in spite of effort of some state governments to stem the tide? Many are of the view that the Fulani herdsman will continue to clash with farmers who till the land as long as he nurses the economic interest of grazing his cattle on pastures anywhere. “Unless the Fulani herdsman is restricted to a space to graze his cattle, he would continue to graze his cattle on farmland that [doesn’t] belong to him,” says Cletus Akwaya, media adviser to Governor Suswan. Akwaya said grazing reserves should be found for herdsmen so that they do not roam about the bush. “This is what is done in civilised societies. They should be restricted to certain grazing areas so that they don’t unleash their cow on farmland. In all the clashes, the Fulani are usually the aggressors because they are the ones who bring their cows to eat up rice and maize planted by farmers.”
The Osagie committee also recommended that grazing reserves and cattle routes should be properly demarcated. Bayari said the non-implementation of grazing laws in the country, and the alleged refusal by governments at all levels to allocate land for grazing to Fulani cattle, was responsible for the continuous migration of herdsmen. He said the solution was for all state governments to create sufficient grazing reserves in all LGs within their states and establish pastoralists’ settlement in areas favourable for livestock production.
But if the prevailing sentiments are any indication of what may come, these solutions may not come easy. On July 13, the Senate was divided along ethnic and religious lines during a debate on a bill seeking to establish a National Grazing Reserves Commission, which will have the power to acquire land that will serve as grazing reserves and routes for herdsmen in any part of the country. While northern senators who supported the bill argued that it would reduce the clashes between herdsmen and host farmers, their colleagues from the South opposed it largely on the ground that it was against the Land Use Act and the spirit of federalism and the Nigerian constitution.
Ita Enang, from Akwa Ibom, during the debate on the committee report last July 3 said: “I pray that the report of this committee be rejected to the extent that it seeks to create grazing reserve for the whole country, and be accepted only to the extent that it seeks to create grazing reserves for the Federal Capital Territory and within the Federal Capital Territory.” Enang had argued that the bill runs counter to the spirit and letters of the Land Use Act, which vests the ownership of land in a state on the governor. He said the National Assembly could therefore not usurp the powers of the state houses of assembly in legislating on lands belonging to states. Though Abdul Ningi, from Bauchi Central, countered by saying that the section on Land Use Act on which Enang based his argument “is only for the purposes of building residences,” the report had to be stood down that day over conflict of constitutionality. When Ningi observed that “the entire route of the nation belongs to the federal government just like roads,” Ahmed Makarfi, from Kaduna State, relying on his experience as a former state governor, said the government at the centre will still have to consult with the state government before it could get land to use. Kabiru Gaya, from Kano State, explained: “Animals have to move from the North during dry season down to the southern part of the country; and when there is raining season in the North, then they migrate to the North. They are Nigerians (and) they have to feed their animals.”
Socio-political groups across the country are also divided on the bill. While the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, welcomed the idea, the Afenifere in the South-west, Ohanaeze in the South-east, Ijaw National Congress as well as the Federation of Middle Belt People all spoke against the idea of government acquiring land in other parts of the country for northern cattle rearers. The lack of consensus on how to tackle the problem, many believe, is as a result of perception of the Fulani as having expansionist tendencies. There is a general perception of the Fulani, both herdsmen and elite, as domineering and politically ambitious people who would crush anything and anyone along their path.
It is this alleged territorial ambition of the Fulani that is believed to be at the core of the crisis in Plateau state where the Berom and the Fulani herdsmen have been at war for years. The indigenous tribes in Jos, especially the Berom, perceive the Fulani as settlers who are bent on taking over their ancestral land. The political struggle for supremacy between the Fulani elite in Jos and the indigenous people has long spread to the bush where the herdsmen and the farmers also slug out.
Except the elite find a common ground on this issue, the likes of Bello and Dailing will pass down the mutual distrust and hatred to generations after them. Thus the search for peace may then become a mirage.
Culled from The Tell Magazine
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