Grazing Conundrum: Herdsmen-Farmers Conflict and Internal Security Crisis in Nigeria

Abstract

Historically, protracted farmers-nomadic herders’ conflict has constituted a deepening form of insecurity in Nigeria. In the last few years the intensification and rising cases of the herders-farmers crisis, from brush fire to an all-consuming conflagration, raised issues of conspiracy of the state, poor attitude and inadequate preparation to providing security to the Nigerian people. In fact, the protracted violent confrontations between the farmers and the herders have expanded into more worrisome dimensions. This can be seen from the changing patterns of the conflict in which the strategies adopted by the rampaging herdsmen shifted from primitive attacks at farmlands to the use of sophisticated weapons to invade communities and institutions. We are not oblivious of the government’s feeble efforts to address the herders-farmers crisis. Such efforts include the Northern Region Grazing Reserves Law of 1965, the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) in 1989, the deployment of Special Task Force—Operation Safe Haven (STF-OSH) in 2001 to States like Plateau and Kaduna, the failed National Grazing Reserve (Establishment) Bill 2016 and the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017, in States like Benue, Ekiti and Taraba. However, this chapter argues that the seemingly elite conspiracy and government leniency that underlies the inability of the security agencies to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators of the violence tends to have compounded the monstrous herders-farmers conflict in Nigeria. The chapter adopts documentary methods of data collection and uses qualitative descriptive analysis. It predicates its argument on conspiracy theory. The chapter therefore recommends that the State should rise and perform her primary responsibility and refrain from the present trend of justifying impunity. It also recommends the gradual process of establishing ranches and the government’s proactive response to herdsmen attacks by ensuring decisive punishment of those implicated in the violence in a bid to end the prevailing crisis.