There is a new shift to agriculture in Nigeria, but in its semi-arid rural parts, the feud for land and resources between farmers and nomadic herdsmen continues to threaten its future.
IN 2018, DANIEL JAMES WAS seated in St. Augustine’s Church in the rural middle belt of Nigeria. By his side in the congregation were his two sisters, and a handful of family members. They were mourning the demise of his father, Paul James, a 70-year-old farmer who was shot in the head in the dead of night when Fulani herdsmen attacked his village.
“We woke up in the middle of the night to gun shots. They entered my father’s hut and we heard multiple shots and we immediately hid under the bed and waited until they left the area,” says James.
His father fought for his life in intensive care for two weeks before succumbing to his wounds. The clashes between armed herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria have been escalating for years. The increasingly violent episodes are as a result of a battle for scarce resources that have invariably stirred up long-held tensions over religion and ethnicity.
The alleged disputes between mostly Christian farmers and Muslim herdsmen have been exacerbated by climate change and desertification, which have caused herdsmen to migrate south in search of resources to feed their cattle and livestock.
Their quest for survival has in turn angered the local population, leading to attacks and reprisals. Jonathan Ajioko, a local churchgoer, also mourned his mother and brother in a similar attack in 2018 in Mbalom, Benue State.
“My village is a quiet village and nobody thought something like this would ever happen. They were in church when the attack happened. About 30 people died that day including women and children,” remembers Ajioko.
Two days later, a group of men from his village, armed with guns, set up road blocks and gunned down anyone they suspected of being “Muslim or Fulani”. A total of 10 people died, according to Ajioko. The conflict is reportedly getting worse by the day.
“This has become very rampant in local villages and it is still ongoing. These people are living in fear of attacks every day. The clashes have taken over 500 lives across various villages in Nigeria,” says Malo Usman, a leader of the Adara ethnic group.
The competition for land is intense. On the one hand, herdsmen believe that the available grazing land has shrunk because farmers have settled on land that they have used for hundreds of years as grazing routes to move their cattle seasonally.
On the other hand, farmers want swift and severe punishment to Fulani trespassers who trample on their soil with their herds of cattle. Even though agriculture still remains the largest sector of the Nigerian economy and employs two-thirds of the entire labor force according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the ensuing conflicts have led to major production hurdles for Africa’s most populous economy.
According to the President of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, the African continent is spending about $35 billion on food imports alone resulting in a significant loss of jobs. By 2030, the size of the food and agriculture business in Africa will be worth a whopping $1 trillion.
The sector has been hyped as Nigeria’s new salvation, ushering in a new era away from oil and embracing the power of its land resources. But therein lies the problem. The massive expansion of farming in Nigeria’s middle belt to meet this growing demand for food has cut access to grazing land for nomadic herders.
“Land is always going to be static and will not increase, therefore, the competition is only growing bigger. So, the importance of raising grazing reserves and encouraging these herdsmen to settle down in them cannot be overemphasized,” says Ibrahim Abdullahi, Communications Manager for the Nigerian Association of Miyetti.
The practice he refers to dates back to colonial times where areas of land were preserved for exclusive use by livestock. The Nigerian government’s Grazing Reserve Act of 1964 was aimed at tackling the problem of alienation of grazing land being faced by the pastoral population at the time. Under this act, an area would be created mainly in the northern part of Nigeria, exclusively for the Fulani herdsmen to graze their cattle.
However, desertification of these rich lands led to encroachment by the Sahara Desert, leading to a scarcity of grazing pastures. Experts believe that in spite of these challenges, there needs to be federal and local government participation to map out a coherent policy to find new areas running throughout the country, exclusively for grazing.
Thus, a new explanation for the violent clashes began to emerge. The growing violence, once traditionally blamed on religious or ethnic divisions, was now seen as a simple clash over resources, which according to Amnesty International, has claimed the lives of more than 3,600 people since 2016.
“We lived very well with the Christian community before but after the 2011 elections, the Fulani villages were attacked. They killed the Fulanis and destroyed our huts and cattle,” says a Fulani herdsman named Abdullahi.
FORBES AFRICA reached out to Nigerian government sources but they were unavailable to comment on the issue.
“The shift towards farming not only reflects Nigeria’s rapid population growth, but also successive governments’ efforts to diversify the economy away from its heavy reliance on oil,” says Adesina.
Furthermore, the plunge in oil prices, which sent the country into recession in 2016, means Nigeria has no choice but to return to the land and make agriculture the driver of economic diversification. But with nearly 200 million inhabitants, Nigeria’s population boom is putting pressure on its natural resources.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, clashes between herding and farming communities in 2018 have killed more people than the conflict involving the Islamist insurgent group, Boko Haram. This rural conflict is a raging issue that still awaits resolution. Without any apparent political will, the reconciliation between herders and farmers remains a distant prospect.