Grazing Reserves And Southern Kaduna Massacre

By Gbemiga Olakunle

We are watching with breathtaking amazement the level of destruction of lives and property reportedly going on in Southern Kaduna. The conflict in the area has claimed about 808 lives, while about 57 persons suffered life threatening injuries in the hands of suspected Fulani herdsmen. The body language of The Presidency on this situation is troubling. President Muhammadu Buhari has not uttered any word of condemnation on the reported mass killing that can be likened to genocide.

However, the Sultan of Sokoto has reportedly frowned at the wanton destruction of lives and property in the area. The respected traditional ruler and head of the Muslim community in Nigeria, Alhaji Mohammed Sa’ad Abubakar III, has even advised President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Nasir El-Rufai to put an end to the crisis in the area. In his condemnation of the killings, the Sultan declared that fundamental Islamic law forbids the unlawful destruction of lives and property, except for a just cause. While defending his principal, the presidential spokesperson, Femi Adesina, was also quoted as saying that there is no need for the President to speak on the killings since the Kaduna State Governor, El-Rufai, is on top of the matter as the Chief Security Officer (CSO) of the State.

Rev. Father Paul Jatau has, however, accused the governor of being complacent in his handling of the contentious matter. In fact, the Rev. Father went ahead to allege that it was the refusal of the Southern Kaduna residents to turn their lands into grazing reserves for the Fulani herdsmen that formed the bedrock of the crisis. About 808 human lives are reportedly lost in a particular section of a Federating Unit within the Federal Republic of Nigeria and yet the Presidency has not deemed it fit to utter a single word or condemnation whether it means it or not!

We are talking of human lives here and not those of chickens. Even if such lives belong to other animals, what does it cost the authorities concerned to condemn  such unwarranted destruction in unmistaken terms before going ahead to investigate the matter with a view to getting to its root and stopping it? Since the Sultan of Sokoto and the President of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) has strongly condemned the destruction and advised both the President and the Governor of the affected State on what to do, there is no need to further over-flog the matter.

Nobody Needs Grazing Reserves Now

By Rotimi Fasan

There was in this past weekend at least one reported incident of a ghastly nature between Fulani herdsmen and hunters. This happened in Koh village in Adamawa State. Five lives including that of one hunter and five herdsmen were lost in that encounter. This would be the latest in a long series of bloody encounters between cattle herders who have since replaced their prodding staff and concealed daggers with the more modern and effective assault rifle.

While clashes between farmers and herdsmen have a long history in different parts of the north, there has been an exponential increase in such clashes in different parts of the country, mostly outside the north, in the last one and half years. As always in these recent cases the herdsmen have been the main aggressors for the simple reason that they’ve been responsible for leading their animals into other peoples’ properties, practically turning such persons’ means of livelihood into grazing fields. But like the herdsmen, farmers are in their line of business to make money. Beyond leading their cattle into farmlands herdsmen or people who pretend to tend cattle have been known to engage in wanton acts of criminality.

They are involved in armed robbery, raping and abduction of women and children in isolated communities. But the one aspect of the activities of these herdsmen that have been most controversial is their readiness to place their rights as diary farmers over and above the rights of food and cash crop farmers. For them, their activities seem to say, their cattle is worth more than human life to say nothing of anybody’s farm. They would kill at the least provocation just in order to assert their right to graze their cattle. And with assault rifles now part of their paraphernalia of business, their criminal tendencies go unchecked.

They’ve decimated families and sacked villages from places as far-flung apart as Benue and Adamawa to Ekiti. From Oyo, Plateau, Enugu to Ebonyi, it’s been a harvest of deaths and destruction. Yet, the response from the authorities has been one of accommodation if not outright appeasement. Rather than taking a firm hold of the issue and tackling it headlong, state and federal authorities have tended to be weak-kneed in terms of what they ought to do. But this ought not to be so. The number of lives that have been lost to clashes between herdsmen and farmers or members of other communities ought to make our civil authorities ashamed. They’ve practically abdicated their responsibilities as Nigerians saw recently with the Agatu and Nimbo massacres. People are now contemplating self help in the face of the irresponsible abdication by municipal, state and federal authorities.

Cattle Herdsmen As The New Boko Haram?

By Reuben Abati 
“No matter how far the town, there is another beyond it” – Fulani Proverb.

There has been so much emotionalism developing around the subject of the recent clashes between nomadic pastoralists and farmers, and the seeming emergence of the former as the new Boko Haram, forbidding not Western education this time, but the right of other Nigerians to live in peace and dignity, and to have control over their own geographical territory. From Benue, to the Plateau, Nasarawa, to the South West, the Delta, and the Eastern parts of the country, there have been very disturbing reports of nomadic pastoralists killing at will, raping women, and sacking communities, and escaping with their impunity, unchecked, as the security agencies either look the other way or prove incapable of enforcing the law.  The outrage South of the Sahel is understandable. It is argued, rightly or wrongly, that the nomadic pastoralist has been overtaken by a certain sense of unbridled arrogance arising from that notorious na-my-brother-dey-power mentality and the assumption that “the Fulani cattle” must drink water, by all means, from the Atlantic Ocean.

It is this emotional ethnicization of the crisis that should serve as a wake-up call for the authorities, and compel the relevant agencies to treat this as a national emergency deserving of pro-active measures and responses. It is not enough to issue a non-committal press statement or make righteous noises and assume that the problem will resolve itself. Farmer-pastoralist conflict poses a threat to national security. It is linked to a number of complex factors, including power, history, citizenship rights and access to land. Femi Fani-Kayode in a recent piece has warned about Nigeria being “on the road to Kigali”, thus referring to the genocide that hobbled Rwanda in the 90s as the Hutus and the Tutsis drew the sword against each other. Fani-Kayode needs not travel all the way to Rwanda. Ethnic hate has done so much damage in Nigeria already; all we need is to learn from history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Ethnic hate, serving as sub-text to the January 1966 and July 1966 coups, for example, set the stage for the civil war of 1967 -70. The root of Igbo-Hausa/Fulani acrimony can be traced back to that season when Igbos were slaughtered in the North, the Hausa/Fulani were slaughtered in the East and Nigeria found itself in the grip of a “To Thy Tents, O Israel” chorus. Ethnic hate also led to the Tiv riots, crisis in the Middle Belt since then, and the perpetual pitching of one ethnic group against the other in Nigeria’s underdeveloped politics. We should be careful.