The Fulani herdsman: my Man of the Year

In fact, he is the Man of All Seasons in Nigeria because for decades now there is no year that the Fulani herdsman does not make headline news, often for very negative reasons. Yet, quite inexplicably, he is ALLOWED by our government to proceed and again dominate the news each year.From January 1 to December […]

In fact, he is the Man of All Seasons in Nigeria because for decades now there is no year that the Fulani herdsman does not make headline news, often for very negative reasons. Yet, quite inexplicably, he is ALLOWED by our government to proceed and again dominate the news each year.
From January 1 to December 31 each year in our country and for the past four or five decades, the Fulani herdsman has been, and I fear, will always continue to be, in the news in one part of the country or another if nothing is done to remove the source of his rather negative news value. And he is always in the news for one and only one thing: clashes with farmers over grazing rights or over the unleashing of his herd to eat up crops planted in the field. He is also in the news when some of his herd are rustled by thieves. Usually in most, if not all of these clashes, deaths of either the Fulani herdsmen or of the local farmers and cattle thieves occur. It will be no exaggeration to say that each year, this nation does not lose less than 10,000 of its citizens to fights between Fulani herdsmen and farmers and rustlers.
This is not the only harm, or loss, the nation has over the years suffered from the regular and sustained clashes. Nigeria has been bleeding profusely from its ‘civil war’ among certain of its citizens. According to a recent UNDP figures, Nigeria today has a world record number of internally displaced persons. Apart from the Boko Haram insurgency in some parts of the North East, the number one source of IDP in Nigeria is clashes between herdsmen and farmers. Sometime last year, in a two-part article I had done on these pages entitled Taraba Wars: From the mid -1990s to the present  I drew attention to the debilitating effect this has had on food production, poverty, underdevelopment and lack of peace and progress in Taraba State in particular and in the rest of the country in general.
It does appear that those in authorities have come to accept these herdsmen-farmers’ clashes as inevitable; that they have become a part of normal life in Nigeria. The authorities appear helpless. As a result, the Fulani herdsman is becoming bolder and more ferocious by the day. Sometimes he is said to hire mercenaries from other countries to come into Nigeria and deal with some of his more troublesome adversaries he thinks he cannot deal with by himself. Whole villages are sacked. Sometimes he unleashes his herd to eat up the crops of his enemies in a scotched earth policy designed to teach some farmers a lasting lesson. There is no single community in this beleaguered nation the blood of whose son or daughter the Fulani herdsman has not shed. His livestock is his life. He is loyal and accountable to no one or government but to his animal. He owes no loyalty or affinity to any land and so he can commit any atrocity or desecration against any land or person and get away literally and metaphorically with it.
My fear is not even with the lack of government attention. It is, frighteningly, with some intellectuals, especially my Hausa-Fulani friends, of whom one expects will offer some useful insight into how we can tame the menace of the Fulani herdsman. When you talk to them and wonder why ranches cannot be established across the country so that the Fulani can have a sedentary and more accommodating lifestyle with others in the community, they tell you the matter is not that simple. They say you cannot easily destroy the culture of the Fulani and expect them to accept it. Some tell you that the matter lies with farmers and other modern developers of the land who have taken over the grazing routes delineated in the 50s and 60s for the Fulani herdsman. This amazes me enormously because I cannot see how we can reasonably be talking about respecting grazing routes in the 21st century and at a time so much has changed in the country.
Compared to the 1950s and -60s, our population has tripled; so much has changed and our governments have become more and more irresponsible. How can anyone in his right senses expect that it is only in the area of the grazing routes demarcated in the times of colonial rule and in the days of Ahmadu Bello that would be respected?
When you now ask them whether we have to continue to witness the bloody clashes since the idea of ranches is either not feasible or is alien to and therefore will not be acceptable to the Fulanis, they just shrug their shoulders in resigned defeat and leave you to your worry. And I am shocked. How can a nation be so cruel to its people especially to the weakest and most vulnerable who are unmistakably the farmers and the guarantors of its food and national security? How can we continue to pretend that a natural calamity (and a predictable one at that) that takes the lives of an average of 10,000 citizens a year is not serious enough to warrant serious action, even one that will inevitably discomfort some in the short while?
I have told some people that on Judgment Day, some of our leaders will be tried by Heaven and convicted not as many think, for the crimes and sins of bribery and corruption, but for their casual disregard for human lives. Governance is, first and above all, about the lives of human beings entrusted into the care of leaders. All other concerns of government are secondary to this. It is the responsibility of every government to safeguard the lives of citizens by removing the sources of possible and obvious actions that would lead to the loss of life of even a ‘half’ individual.
The way I see things in my own simple eyes, the price this nation is paying for protein from cattle and mutton is simply too high. If we cannot organise our society in a way that the Fulani herdsman can safely and conveniently ply his age-old trade, and the farmer can plant his own crops and reap from the sweat of his toils, then it is better we import meat or get our protein from other sources. Nigerians do not exist to eat only cow or sheep meat. Why must we pay such a huge price each year in order to have animal protein from Fulani herdsmen?
If Nigeria was not governed by strange men and women who love that the blood of citizens should be spilled as sacrifice to the equally strange gods they serve, someone somewhere would have said ‘enough of the bloodshed by cattle rearers’. A nation that loses about 10,000 of its men and women each year to any enemy would have declared war against such a foe, no matter how weak its strength is in comparison to that of that enemy. But quite surprisingly, the Nigerian state seems so impotent in a matter that has the vast potential to destabilize it and create unnecessary suffering for its citizens.