PROLONGED conflicts between crop farmers and herders in Nigeria have metamorphosed into a chain of crises that are currently threatening the continued co-existence of over 200 ethnic nationalities making up the country. The ICIR’s Senior Investigative Reporter, in this piece, writes on how three countries in Africa manage their cattle and relationship between herders and crop farmers in their territories, including experts’ advice from the countries on how Nigeria can overcome its current travails.

An unprecedented increase in farmers’ population, driven by a corresponding transformation in farming methods and changing climate, has mainly been responsible for a geometric rise in feuds between crop farmers and herders in Nigeria since the beginning of the century.

The conflicts have led to hundreds of deaths, rustling, and displacements of farmers and herders alike. Innocent people in communities have been at the receiving end of the crisis. The clashes have resulted in ethnic profiling, distrust and division, and they have been compounded by banditry, kidnapping, abduction, terrorism, some of which are offshoots of herders-crop farmers’ conflicts.

These crises recently climaxed into the blockade of food and cattle to the southern part of the country by merchants from the country’s north.

Cattle rearing in Nigeria is done mainly in open fields, farmlands, residential areas, as pastoralists move their livestock wherever they could find grass and water. The practice often results in cattle straying into people’s farms and eating up crops or destroying farms.

What appears as the most ambitious effort by the federal government to address the crisis was the inauguration of National Livestock Transformation Plan in September 2019.

It was designed to make cattle farmers embrace ranching, defined as raising herds of animals on large hectares of land. The government said 100 billion naira would be committed to the initiative, which would run between 2019 and 2028.

With the plan, the federal government would provide 80 percent of the fund, while state governments would make land and remaining 20 percent of the fund available, including other logistics needed for its successful implementation.

he initiative followed similar policies that had been introduced by African countries such as the Ethiopian Livestock Master Plan, Tanzanian Livestock Master Plan and Rwanda Livestock Master Plan.

The programme was inaugurated by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Gongoshi Grazing Reserve in Mayo-Belwa Local Government Area of Adamawa. It started as a pilot project in seven states namely, Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa, Taraba and Zamfara. Stakeholders in the plan included pastoralists, farmers, private investors and government.

Despite the efforts, crises between crop farmers and herders have worsened in the country.

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A similar programme known as RUGA had been designed by the federal government, but it faced stiff opposition from some sections of the country which perceived it as a means of grabbling land for herders at every cost.

The plan suggested that state government and communities allocate a section of their land for pastoralists, so they could rear their animals on the land and live on it. The thinking of the scheme was to keep herders away from people’s farms and other assets that could be destroyed by cattle.

The ICIR reports that though the Fulanis, a major tribe in northern part of Nigeria, are famous for cattle rearing in the country. However, people from other parts of the nation also own significant portions of cattle in the nation.

In Zambia, cattle farmers plant their own crops

Zambia has a unique approach to cattle management. Nkandu Luo, a professor and minister of livestock in Zambia, advised Nigeria to create a ministry of livestock (and fisheries) to end crop farmers and pastoralists’ feuds in the country.

Luo said in a telephone interview with The ICIR that her country had not been experiencing any conflict between crop farmers and herders because apart from her ministry’s constant engagement with the two groups, modern methods of animal farming had been introduced to the farmers.

The minister also said that government always urged crop farmers to have their own cattle, and cattle farmers to plant their own crops.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/zambia-gambia-south-africa-offer-nigeria-refresher-courses-on-cattle-management/

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