Nigeria: Marauding Cattlemen And The Burning Fuse

Fulani Cattleman On The Move

Nigerians generally condone all sorts of assault on their fundamental human rights.  The government and those in positions of leadership assume that the average Nigerian neither appreciates nor understands the rights of citizenship. Government always emphasizes the need for citizens to sacrifice for the wellbeing of the nation, while the responsibility of rulers to the people is often left in the hands of God, or chance, by the hypocritical use of palliative religious and tribal brainwashing. More than five decades after our flag independence and with so many individual achievements in the arts, sciences, economics and political fields, we are still a nation groping in darkness, wondering how we lost our way.

That grazing animals are allowed to roam with impunity in a largely agrarian country such as Nigeria is a degrading anachronism. Apart from health risks to other animals and humans, due to cross-border movement of cattle, cattlemen have razed whole farming communities, accompanied by wanton killings as retribution, when farmers dared to protect themselves. 

Rearing cattle is probably as old as the first domestication of these animals in antiquity. But in modern times, most of the countries that have sizable cattle production industries have devised comprehensive methods for creating ranches and grazing reserves for animals. In this way, everyone is happy because the animals can feed in peace and loss in weight and injury due to never-ending chase after green grass is avoided. The health status of the animals and vaccination regimes can also be easily monitored. 

In Nigeria, Fulani cattlemen have not only disregarded the rights of settled farmers by wilfully destroying their crops when cattle graze on them. They have become a serious threat to the livelihood of large swaths of north central Nigeria with ruthless incursions into the southeast and southwestern parts of the country.  The Fulani have been implicated in instigating communal clashes in states such as Plateau, Taraba, Kaduna and Benue - in order to secure political, cultural and land rights. 

The incursion of cattlemen into the southwest has been going on for years, with many skirmishes, but the latest raid that involved the abduction of a senior statesman in Ondo state has generated a lot of flak. The gentleman, was abducted on his birthday from his farm, kept incommunicado for about four nights, and released only after an unstated ransom was paid. This was after inflicting machete cuts on farm workers and the senior citizen. Curiously, the news as at the time of this writing was that the cattlemen came back to the same farm to deliberately wreak havoc.  

It appears that since the conquest of the animist kings of Hausa land in ancient times by the Fulani, the amalgam has maintained a dim view of the autonomy or rights of other people in the space called Nigeria. To make matters worse, the departing British colonial powers found them easier to work with and virtually handed the country over to them at 'independence'. On the average, the Hausa-Fulani are very close-knit and have fiercely defended their way of life [which involves cattle grazing] at all costs. They are the least likely to integrate with others, amongst the many tribes in the country, except at the highest level, but even then, it is strictly for business - not personal integration. They have continued these self-identifying practices, despite the obvious fact that some of their ways are an antithesis to modern life - or inimical to the creation of a truly Nigerian state. 

Presently, the southwest is becoming justifiably restless because of the deliberately oppressive activities of Fulani cattlemen in their midst. For example, if the tables were turned, and people from the south are the ones going into the rugas [traditional Fulani settlement] and farmlands of the Hausa-Fulani, destroying their means of livelihood, raping their women to death and setting fire to their homes over the past decades, Nigeria would probably have ceased to exist. Some southwestern politicians are of the opinion that the implementation of the confab report of 2014, which presumably grants regional autonomy to the regions of Nigeria, is the best solution to some of the internal crisis facing the country. There is no doubt that Nigeria needs to be restructured but we keep postponing this all-important exercise, by pretending all is well - because the most powerful political entities in the country benefit immensely from the status quo. 

It is time to douse the burning fuse of Fulani impunity in the country and begin a comprehensive rehabilitation of game reserves and encouragement of ranching. In the few months, the present government has been in power, some northern state governments have boasted about how many cows, goats and sheep they recovered from rustlers.  But they are silent about the deaths and destruction visited on farmers by Fulani cattlemen. Curiously, you don't hear much about Fulani/Farmers clashes in the 'core north' - it happens mostly amongst those considered non Hausa-Fulani or Christians.

The choice of what we want for Nigeria in this matter is simple: a nation where individual rights and citizenship privileges are guaranteed or the Fulani conception of reaping where he did not sow.  Sadly, if the recent Arewa Consultative Forum's response to the southwest's complaints is anything to go by, we have a long way to go before true nationhood - if ever.