By Obi Nwakanma
Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s current president is a passionate Fulani,
and the Fulani are a transnational migrant group, dealing today with the forces
of environmental change that are forcing great pressure on their pastoral culture.
Armed Fulani-herdsmen as desertification intensifies in the Savanah regions,
grazing and watering grounds disappear, and drives the herdsmen farther and
farther out, seeking places to graze, occupy, or settle. The Fulani herdsmen
are no strange sights in Nigeria.
In fact J.P. Clark, one of Nigeria’s
eminent poets, captures both the life of the Fulani herdsmen, but more
specifically the resilience and silent will of the cattle in his poem, “Fulani
Cattle.” And I should say that I myself have anticipated a great
conflict.
In my yet to be published novel, one of the
characters, Simple, is lying in the solitude of his farm near the Orashi river,
after a day’s work, and after smoking a little grass, and in the haze of sleep
he hears the rustle of cattle in a neighboring farm and thinks, they better not come near my farm or I’ll
draw blood. Something to that effect. It did occur to me quite early when I
penned that scene that a real menace is brewing, unheeded, and it is the
struggle for arable land. What did not occur to me, even in my wildest
imagination, is the increasing dimension of war-like activities that now
accompany Fulani pastoralists in their moves to settle new grazing areas by
force, as the condition of the earth drives them further and further from the Sahel. It may just as well be old grazing
pressure, but the recent spate and heightening of attacks of Southern agrarian
towns by so-called “Fulani Herdsmen” is throwing many curveballs.
This menace has been
reported in the North too, in places like Adamawa, the Plateau, Southern
Kaduna, Nassarawa and Benue, basically, mostly Christian areas of
the North, where frequent attacks and resistance against the so-called “Fulani
herdsmen” have been going on in the last two years with growing intensity. The
thrust of the attacks has given rise to a religious dimension to this: the fear
that the so-called Herdsmen are masking a greater menace: religious and
political conquest of a scale comparable to colonialism. Such a possibility
should not be dismissed as conspiracy, because indeed, most political and
conquest movements are the products of conspiracies often publicly denied or
even ignored until it is too late. So, the spate of attacks have increased with
intensity, and some analysts have noted that the South, once seemingly buffered
from these activities have become flashpoints, and areas of serious and rapid
conflict involving the so-called “Fulani herdsmen,” since the election and
swearing in of President Buhari. Is there a connection? I dare not think.