Except for the level of carnage, the destruction of human life hardly shocks any more. These days, succeeding slaughtering dwarfs the preceding. It’s Boko-Haram in the northeast, but the blitz-attacks by presumed Fulani herdsmen leads to dual suspicion: is Boko-Haram disguising as herdsmen and covertly overrunning the rest of Nigeria or is it a mock-Jihad? It just can’t be grazing rights that give them the impetus to move into people’s lands and rather than talk with them, come with whips first, then with AK47 rifles. Question is, what do they really want? Move cattle/meat to us or take our land too? If it’s meat, solution can be sought away from force. If it’s territory-grab, there’ll be resistance no matter how subtly disguised. The wider solution to territory-grab is to look into the stern effects of desert-encroachment. So when Governor Babangida Aliyu calls on the Federal Government to provide adequate grazing reserves and routes for nomads to end incessant clashes with farmers, he has to be quickly reminded that already, doubt is rife on who these herdsmen really are. Besides, is that his condition for peace? Hear him:
“It is the considered opinion of the forum that a national policy be put in place to settle nomads and provide adequate reserves and cattle routes.” Note the word, ‘settle’. First, it’s the law that can say to what extent the FG can go to appropriate one’s land as route or reserve for another and only via the consent/acceptance of the owner(s). To quickly remind the governor, it’s the host that’s first settled not the guest with his cattle-baggage. It’s the host that’ll say, ‘I want’ before the FG can say, ‘take’. Precisely, ‘settle the nomads’, only increases existing suspicion and typically represents ‘taking issues by the middle’. The forum continued: only 36 out of the nation’s 415 grazing reserves have been gazetted. It urged the FG to take immediate steps to set aside dedicated areas of land for pastoral use…..this would help in re-integrating the herdsmen into the mainstream society and reducing or even eliminating herdsmen/farmers conflicts. But is anyone in a hurry or at ease to re-integrate someone with AK47 rampaging his territory?
Sometime past, this column suggested more amicable/productive ways of approaching this issue to make both sides win. Here’s the extract:
Pretending that there’s nothing like ‘indigene’ is self-deceit. Most host communities to the herdsmen are subsistent farmers. What they get from their farmlands is what they live on. When the herds come, plant-devastation occurs and compensation is scanty, if ever. At the point of destroying a people’s livelihood, battle ensues. If lawmakers see placating settlers with grazing fields/routes at the expense of indigenes, they’re dead wrong. No legislation can play down the intractability of such conflicts. You settle it today, it erupts more virulently next.
Again, the issue at stake is: meat versus grazing space. What do we do? Stop eating meat? No. Chase herdsmen away? No. So what?
The answer lies in making both sides win. Each state has its agricultural department. The department should know the meat-consumption rate of its inhabitants, goes ahead to order such number for the period. Before this, it grooms its own local cattle-caretakers from among its inhabitants even if it means engaging the Fulani herdsmen to train them. After training, they quit and the locals take over. By ordering its needed stock from the herdsmen in a given period, they (herdsmen) earn their income right in their home-state; then why trek long distances only to meet hostile hosts? By grooming local cattle-caretakers, each state builds internal capacity and creates job in tandem. Being indigenes of the state, suspicion and aggression are minimized or entirely erased. It becomes the duty of the state government to allocate space for pastoral activities knowing full well that the state is the prime beneficiary.
Further, the fear of territory-grab by the herdsmen is nipped.
If they’re earning well with less stress, they’d hardly hurt their clients. It’s not the same as having to keep watch over their cattle to prevent theft or forcefully invading farmlands to save them from starvation. Both lead to conflict.
Hitherto, the policy being pursued is to make each state provide grazing space for the herdsmen. Wrong. After grazing space, what next? A settlement niche will eventually metamorphose into a land-grab, then, conflict. What’s needed is skill-transfer not people-transfer. The herdsmen transfer their skill and get paid; the indigenes acquire skill and keep their territory.
Invariably, this conflict is as a result of policy-default. If pursued, many proactive states would run highly efficient livestock projects: a dairy department/leather/meat/horns/bones, with huge job-input. It’s not the same as the awkward news-bits: ‘100 villagers killed by invading herdsmen and mass-burial planned.’
This is the direction to go.
Onyebuchi Onyegbule
