What is the government doing to find a lasting solution to the problem?
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammad Abubakar, has not said anything new in his lamentation that the incessant conflict between farmers and herders was threatening food and national security in Nigeria. His argument that climate change is a catalyst in the crisis is well-known. Nigerians understand that the perennial bloodshed between farmers and pastoralists is embedded in the struggle for fodders during the dry season. Invariably, it is this scarcity that informs the seasonal migration of herders in search of grazing land and water for the survival of their livestock. The question critical stakeholders would therefore want the minister to answer is: What is the government doing to find a lasting solution to this problem?
Given the primacy of farmers and herders in the economic chain of our country, what is expected of the government is to put in place measures that will sustain the harmonious relationship between these two groups. But that is not what we see. Yet public lamentation cannot substitute for seeking ways by which the two groups could peacefully coexist in their mutual interest and that of the nation. What we need from the minister are practical ways on how to tackle the challenge. He may perhaps need to be reminded that a government that cannot guarantee the security of life and property for citizens and residents in a country has failed.
In an age when modern ranches have replaced roving herds while beef production has become a modern mechanised industrial undertaking, one of the curious tragedies of Nigeria is that we have come to accept the category ‘nomadic’ as a permanent description of a vital segment of our populace. That perhaps explains why President Muhammadu Buhari would be canvassing for the resurrection of some pre-colonial grazing routes. As we reminded the president at the time, wherever those grazing routes of the 1960s may have been, population growth and pressure of farming and land use would have brought them under new uses. Besides, even if the grazing routes were still valid, they can only facilitate further clashes between settler farmers and migrant herders who have no legitimate claims to the lands on which they and their herds settle and devastate.
Due to the nature of these communal conflicts, many communities across the country are self-arming either to protect themselves or for reprisal attacks as bloody battles for supremacy and for the control of land become increasingly alarming. Invariably, this pattern, along with limited access leads to conflict with the farmers and often results in the destruction of crops and cattle rustling by both parties. It is therefore time to modernise the way we rear cattle in our country by investing in ranching or creating a cattle colony, instead of carrying on with the primitive pattern that is no longer in vogue.
It is disturbing that farming is becoming a hazardous profession at a time when the nation needs to embrace agriculture not only for food security but also to take many of our young people away from the street. Authorities, both in Abuja and the states concerned, must therefore begin to fashion long-term solutions to the challenge that is generating violence in several theatres at enormous cost to the nation.
Going forward, all relevant stakeholders must come together to find an acceptable formula to deal with the challenge. States and the federal government, legislatures, traditional rulers, civil society organisations, security agencies and communities need to frontally tackle these deadly and criminal conflicts which threaten lives and livelihoods in Nigeria.
