Scene without the herdsmen

Only yesterday Daily Trust on Sunday’s editorial called for a national program to end pastoralism as a sub-national culture within one generation. While some people will say that Daily Trust caved in to blackmail from those who accuse herdsmen of waging war against settled communities and called for an end to a unique way of […]

Only yesterday Daily Trust on Sunday’s editorial called for a national program to end pastoralism as a sub-national culture within one generation. While some people will say that Daily Trust caved in to blackmail from those who accuse herdsmen of waging war against settled communities and called for an end to a unique way of life, others will say that a generation is too long a time within which to accomplish this program. Some Nigerians will want an outright ban of pastoralism so that farmers will have free reign over the land. Never mind that African peasant farmers have not justified their tenancy over this land; after cultivating it for hundreds of years, we are still dependent on Thai rice farmers, Burkinabe beans growers and American wheat farmers for our daily bread.
I am wondering what Nigeria’s rural scene will look like when the herdsmen are gone. Driving along any Nigerian highway or country road, save for a few prominent features such as Zuma and Kotorkoshi rocks, the most ubiquitous presence is the herdsman and his cattle. We say ‘herdsman’ but in most cases these are not men but children, boys and girls that corral herds of cattle through the bushes, forests and valleys in an endless quest for pasture and water. In the process they forgo education.
The dedication with which they go about the task is something else. The herdsman [or more correctly, the herdschild] knows every single ox, cow and calf by name. He devotes his entire time and energy to cattle’s welfare, steers them to the best pastures and water, away from danger and away from farms, as much as possible. Sometimes you see the herdschild carrying a calf that had just been born in the bush. If only Nigerian public servants will show half as much dedication to their jobs as the herdsmen devote to cattle, this country will be just fine. In the days before we were born, herdsmen also had to contend with hyenas that regularly raided their herds and made off with calves. Where cattle are involved, no genuine herdsman will give right of way even to a hyena; they fought if off with sticks, endangering their own lives in the process.
A conspicuous feature of the cattle herds is their constant companion, the cattle egret. As the cattle rumble through the bushes, they stir up grasshoppers which the egrets quickly gobble up. Nigerian farmers should know this; when the herdsman is gone, the cattle egret could be gone as well and grasshoppers and locusts will have a literal field day, gnawing away at weeds and crops. Cattle that stray into farms usually eat only a small part of it before the herdsman steers them away. Yet, this is enough provocation for farmers to resort to war. Why don’t farmers resort to war against grasshoppers and locusts that eat far more crops than cattle do?
In this world you complain about what you see but you never know what will follow. Nigeria’s 14 million cattle heads are accused of denuding vegetation in the Sahelian belt which aids desert encroachment. Let us hope that when the herdsman is gone, many grasses and weeds that have been kept in check by cattle grazing will not overtake farmlands and farmers will be scampering around for government’s help, as usual. 
All the Nigerians who are sitting back these days and saying “herders are a nuisance” and “we should ban pastoralism,” they are the same people who send their wives to the market with only a few naira notes and a long list of shopping items that include meat, cow leg, cow tail, cow intestines and ponmo. It is all very cheap because the herdsman does not extract a bargain price for all his exertions. To drive a cow on foot all the way from Borno to Anambra, and all you want in return is a little money to buy grains, locally made cloth, rubber shoes, a mirror and a radio set is subsidy on a historic scale. The herdsman wants no permanent house. He does not ask the government to pave his cattle route will coal tar; he only wants it to be demarcated as a bush path. He does not ask for a school, a hospital, pipe borne water or electricity. Still, an urban Nigerian man who is imperiously dining on cheap beef and ponmo will at the same time call for his cheap meat provider to be banished.
Nigerian rural markets will be hard hit when the herdsman is gone. As you drive along Nigerian highways, especially in the Northern states, you get the impression that the herdsmen and their women are the demand backbones of roadside markets. They come shopping for grain. They heavily patronise locally made woven cloth; herdsmen are the only people left in Nigeria who do not patronise Chinese-made textile products. About the only imported items they patronise are radio sets, their constant companion as they trek through the bushes. Television is not for them. Some herdsmen now have GSM phones but phone service is available only near the highways, not deep in the bushes.
When the herdsmen are gone, the most intimate knowledge of Nigerian bushes and forests will be gone with them. They know rural routes better than the Surveyor General. They know grasses and water plants more than a Botany professor. They know vagaries of the weather more than NIMET. They know bushfires started by farmers and hunters better than the Federal Fire Service. Herdsmen’s knowledge of animal diseases surpasses that of Sankaci, the old veterinary assistant in my hometown. Their knowledge of collapsible architecture is better than the ABU Faculty of Environmental Design’s. Long before oil prices collapsed and Nigeria became bereft of dollars, herdsmen have perfected total reliance on local raw materials for all their needs.
The herdsman’s most expensive venture in life is to perform the hajj in Saudi Arabia. Unlike poor urban Hausa folks who go around begging rich folks to sponsor them to the hajj, the herdsmen do not beg anyone. They have an asset, namely their cattle, that insulate them from Nigeria’s runaway inflation. My colleague Dr. Bala Mohammed once wrote that for a herdsman, the cost of going to hajj has remained stable at six cows since the 1950s. In 1972 my grandfather paid 200 pounds for a hajj seat and it costs about 800,000 naira these days but for a herdsman it is the same six cows. Even the gold standard is not more stable than that.
Many Nigerians, especially Southerners, think of Hausa and Fulani as one and the same thing, “Hausa/Fulani.” In truth, both Hausa and Fulani think of the other as a queer neighbour at best. Fulani are the butt of all derogatory Hausa jokes, and vice versa. What the Fulani call kado [a Hausaman] is a bumbling fool who does not know his left from his right. The Hausa man’s view of the Fulani is not much better. Yet the two groups, speaking mutually unintelligible languages, are united in Nigerian political parlance as one ethnic group. When the herdsman is gone, will Nigerian media writers finally unbundle the term Hausa/Fulani? 
My only fear for Nigerians that are advocating the banishing of the herdsman is that 30 years down the road, when we see the former herdsmen living in opulent ranches like Texas cowboys, wearing high boots and two gallon hats, with several Dodge and Bronco jeeps in the garage, we will not complain that they have withdrawn subsidy from our meat and we ask the National Assembly to amend the Constitution and force them back into pastoral life. By then it will be too late.