NGWODO: Fulani Herdsmen-Farmers Clashes Is Smokescreen By Terror Militia To Pursue Agenda

• Scale And Organisation Of Operation Beyond Typical Herdsmen

How do you see government’s reaction to growing incidences of Fulani Herdsmen-Farmers’ clashes?
 
I don’t think the Federal Government is giving it the seriousness that it deserves. When you consider the repeated instances of mass murder going on between these two groups; the government is not responding appropriately.
 
The first problem is that we have tension between nomadic herdsmen and agrarian communities, and it is a historical problem that goes back as far as the 80s and it is in many parts of the country. In 2009, even the Borno State government had to expel several hundred herdsmen; so it is in the north, middle belt as well as the southern parts. It is not even a religious or ethnicity issue, it is primarily a resource conflict. The resource in contention is land –the nomadic herdsmen need it for pasturing, while the farmers need it for farming.
 
Secondly, the scope and organisation of the kind of violence and large-scale killings, there is nothing random or spontaneous about this, and we are no longer dealing with what is originally between herdsmen and farmers. We have a terrorist militia that is operating within the context of this conflict, hiding under the herdsmen-farmer problem to carry out its own agenda. The scale of the organisation and tactics that has been involved, calibre of the weaponry and the proportion of the sheer brutality suggest to me that it is not the normal herdsmen-farmers tension. This is more organised and strategic, terrorist militia that has followed a design to achieve an end.
 
Earlier on, say three or four years back, what Boko Haram (BH) used to do was that it would look for local conflicts in various places and try and asserts itself in it. For example, the sectarian conflict in Jos pertaining to local matter between indigenes and settlers with religious and ethnic colouration, but when BH stepped in, it assumed the role of Islamic vanguard of Muslims in the city. It tries to capitalise on already existing conflicts to enhance the group’s own perception in the public eye.
 
I am not attributing what is going on presently to BH, but I think a terrorist militia is operating within the context of this conflict, while public attention is still focused on Fulani herdsmen and farmers. This is my broad overview of the matter.

In clearer terms, are you saying that this perceived terrorist group is hiding under the cloak of the Fulani herdsmen and the State Security Services are not able to discern this?
 
I don’t know and cannot say what the Security Services are seeing or not, it is my own perception. I have tried to track the violence and the escalating scale and the organisation that we are seeing is not typical of what we previously understand to be tension between farmers and herdsmen. I have come to believe that we are dealing with a terrorist entity.
 
The other thing is that even in the last four or five years, it is not simply that we have been dealing with BH; it is more like a generic name to describe all kinds of violence. In reality, BH itself has factions and one of them is a group called ‘Ansaru,’ which kidnapped some foreign nationals in 2012 and actually executed them. So, there are factions and even the ones we have not heard in the media.  These groups have benefited from BH as an umbrella term, even where different actors are carrying out those types of violence.
 
There is definitely more than one terrorist group in Nigeria; it is just that we have not created very accurate taxonomy of the kind of terrorist threats we are facing.

How do we contain this when there are herdsmen in every part of the country?  
 
This is why I said that the FG is not handling it with seriousness. The likely scenario for me is that we might have a situation, particularly in the middle belt, where agrarian communities mobilise themselves and launch an organised response against these perpetrators. The issue with this kind of approach is that once you say that Fulani herdsmen are the problem and you use that term indiscriminately, not most people understand that not all Fulani are nomadic in nature. We have sedentarised Fulani, for example, who have no connection whatsoever with cattle rearing and obviously, you cannot criminalise the entire Fulani community, which is spreading the danger in the way the media report some of these matters. It goes into hasty conclusion that these are Fulani herdsmen, and even in the Falae case; so potential security situation could be created, where you could have an organised violence against an entire ethnic group.
 
You could also have a situation, where the conflict escalates if the agrarian communities in middle belt decide to take the matters into their own hands since the FG has failed them. So, there could be an all-out conflict between these two groups of people and it will do great damage to this country. That would be tragic in terms of lives, displaced communities and damage to our economy.
 
Our economy depends a lot on the Fulani herdsmen and it is not readily recognised, but most Nigeria’s meat protein supply comes from them and the whole country would be seriously affected. It will lead to a conflict in the middle belt, which is the food basket of Nigeria because farm activities would be disrupted. This would affect food supply to southern urban areas; it is nightmare scenario with multi-dimensional adverse effect on the Nigerian society and economy. The conflict has the potential to widen, too. Again, it is a resource conflict, not a religious or ethnic matter.
 
However, if the conflict is allowed to persist, most of the middle belt’s agrarian communities are Christians and there is likely to be a popular interpretation of the crisis as religious or sectarian between Christian farmers and Muslim nomadic herdsmen. This would be erroneous because nomadic herdsmen are not largely Muslims, but animists. These are facts that have to be adequately projected into the public space and consciousness.

What solutions do you proffer to get the nation out of the problem?    

For solutions, we have to go back to the fundamental issue, which is the tension between these two economic groups. The nomadic economy is unsustainable in the long term; you cannot have a situation where active herdsmen are moving from place to place, going across national and communal boundaries with their cattle feeding.
 
We should go back to the grazing routes and grazing reserves plan, which was there in the 20s, but now forgotten. Nigeria should return to the practice of routes and reserves, FG should able be to reach a consensus with State governments and local communities to have designated grazing routes and grazing reserves within which the nomadic herdsmen would be able to pasture and migrate their cattle all year long and carry out their business without incidents.
 
Again, we must develop a system that would enable us police the grazing routes and FG must be able to facilitate interactions between local farming communities and nomadic herdsmen as a way of preventing any conflict before it rears up as an early warning system to identify potential trouble spots.
 
However, the grazing reserves cannot be established in perpetuity because the nomadic economy is unsustainable in the long run. As a society, we may have the reserve for 10-15years, but within that period, we will begin to transit from a nomadic to a ranch-based system of livestock management organised by the Federal Government, in collaboration with all the stakeholders.
 
Obviously, we have to develop our law enforcement and security capacities to deal with the criminals that are using this tension as a pretext for achieving their own ends. When you have people carrying out mass murders, they should be dealt with in like fashion and we should not criminalise the entire ethnic group. There are really no indications that these crimes are being committed by Fulani herdsmen, per se.
 
It cannot be said categorically that Fulani herdsmen kidnapped Chief Olu Falae because they are Fulani herdsmen; these are criminals and we should not take criminals as representatives of an ethnic group or religious group, criminals should be treated as such. That is one of the very wrong paradigm of law enforcement and national security management we have currently in Nigeria.

On the short term, what can nation do to curb these clashes and incidences?
 
Local communities have to organise themselves across the country because of the low level of security; they have taken to self-help. This comes with its own caveat and carries potential risks and that is why the Federal Government should be alive to its responsibility of securing its citizens. In the absence of that, local communities have no option than to exercise their rights to defend themselves against these threats.  
 
However, even in the short term, leadership and governance can still accomplish a lot. If you look at the example of Kaduna State, southern Kaduna has also suffered this kind of terroristic killings and Governor Nasir el Rufai has taken very immediate and resolute strides to deal with the issue. So, a decline is inevitable in the incidences of clashes between nomadic herdsmen and local farming communities from last year till now. Even at this moment, there are grazing routes, but we need these state governors to come together to collaborate in tackling the matter. For the nomadic herdsmen, there is really no dividing lines between states; they are oblivious of boundaries between Kaduna State and Plateau or Plateau and Nasarawa States or Benue, the real epicentre of these clashes. A lot can be done now if the Federal and State governments show the requisite seriousness and commitment.