Government must prioritise ending herdsmen-farmers conflict

While the deadly clashes between herdsmen and farmers continue to escalate around the country and especially in the North-Central states, the government continues to pretend to be helpless in resolving the problem. But the necessity of resolving the conflict is even more urgent as the conflicts threaten not only food and agriculture security, but the unity, peaceful coexistence and harmony of the country.
There have been several studies carried out on how to permanently resolve these conflicts. Some of these reports were commissioned by successive governments while some have been produced by independent groups. One of such non-commissioned report is one done by the International Crisis Group, a transnational non-profit, non-governmental organization that carries out field research on violent conflicts and advances policies to prevent, mitigate or resolve them, has done a good job of tracing the root causes, evolution, impact and implications of these conflicts as well as recommending measures to end them. The report, ‘Herders against Farmers: Nigeria’s Expanding Deadly Conflict’, produced in September 2017, “is based on interviews conducted in September 2016 and July 2017 with a range of actors and stakeholders, including leaders and representatives of pastoralist and farmer organisations, officials of federal and state governments, security officers, leaders of civil society organisations and local vigilante groups, as well as victims of the violence in Adamawa, Benue, Borno, Ekiti, Enugu, Kaduna and Nasarawa states”.

Regarding the principal causes and aggravating factors behind the escalating conflicts, the Group identifies climatic changes (frequent droughts and desertification); population growth (loss of northern grazing lands to the expansion of human settlements); technological and economic changes (new livestock and farming practices); crime (rural banditry and cattle rustling); political and ethnic strife (intensified by the spread of illicit firearms); and cultural changes (the collapse of traditional conflict management mechanisms), but also a dysfunctional legal regime that has allowed crime to go unpunished and, consequently, has encouraged both farmers and herders to take laws into their own hands.
To resolve these conflicts, the International Crisis Group suggests five steps which include, in the short term:
“Strengthen security arrangements for herders and farming communities especially in the north-central zone: this will require that governments and security agencies sustain campaigns against cattle rustling and rural banditry; improve early-warning systems; maintain operational readiness of rural-based police and other security units; encourage communication and collaboration with local authorities; and tighten control of production, circulation and possession of illicit firearms and ammunition, especially automatic rifles, including by strengthening cross-border cooperation with neighbouring countries’ security forces;
“Establish or strengthen conflict mediation, resolution, reconciliation and peacebuilding mechanisms: this should be done at state and local government levels, and also within rural communities particularly in areas that have been most affected by conflict;“Establish grazing reserves in consenting states and improve livestock production and management in order to minimise contacts and friction between herders and farmers: this will entail developing grazing reserves in the ten northern states where governments have already earmarked lands for this purpose; formulating and implementing the ten-year National Ranch Development Plan proposed by a stakeholders forum facilitated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in April 2017; and encouraging livestock producers’ buy-in through easier access to credit from financial institutions.”
In the longer term, it suggests the federal and state governments should consider the following:
“Address environmental factors that are driving herders’ migration to the south: this will require stepping up implementation of programs under the Great Green Wall Initiative for the Sahara and the Sahel, a trans-African project designed to restore drought-and-desert degraded environments and livelihoods including in Nigeria’s far northern belt; and developing strategies for mitigating climate change impact in the far northern states;
“Coordinate with neighbours to stem cross-border movement of non-Nigerian armed herders: Nigeria should work with Cameroon, Chad and Niger (the Lake Chad basin countries) to regulate movements across borders, particularly of cattle rustlers, armed herders and others that have been identified as aggravating internal tension and insecurity in Nigeria.”

These recommendations contain no ambiguity. The government should put them in a basket, together with other such recommendations, like the report of the Gabriel Suswam-led Committee on Grazing Reserves set up by former President Goodluck Jonathan’s government in April 2014, and even by committees set up by the Buhari government, weigh them, sieve the chaff and implement the substance.