Background
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was elected in 2015, promising to improve security, reduce corruption and rejuvenate the economy. At the time, Boko Haram, an Islamist group based in the north-east, posed the greatest threat to state security. It drove farmers off their land, pushed cattle herders out of the region and disrupted trade, all of which weakened food security in north-eastern Nigeria. While the security threat posed by the group has diminished during Buhari’s term in office, it and the Islamic State West Africa Province, a faction that split off from Boko Haram in 2016, continue to terrorise parts of the north-east.
Increased tensions and occasional conflict between sedentary farmers and nomadic cattle herders in the Middle Belt (a region that stretches across the middle third of the country from east to west) have added to the security concerns confronting the state. The dispute has been described as the ‘gravest security challenge’ facing Nigeria. Tensions between mainly Christian farmers and Fulani Muslim herders have existed for decades, with more than 10,000 people killed as a result of clashes between the two groups in the last ten years. The situation could affect the presidential and legislative elections, which are are scheduled for 23 February with 29 gubernatorial elections set to take place in March after polls were postponed on 16 February due to logistical difficulties.
Comment
According to the Nigerian Government, 30 million hectares of farmland are under cultivation. That falls far short of the estimated 78.5 million hectares that are required to feed the growing population. Investment in agriculture is often promoted as a means to wean the economy off its over-reliance on the oil sector and reduce youth unemployment.
Most of the agricultural land is concentrated in the Middle Belt. While there have been periods of amity between the various ethno-religious groups that inhabit the region, for the most part its history has been fractious and often violent.
For centuries, nomadic herders from the north travelled to the Middle Belt to graze their cattle during the dry season. In recent years, nomadic herders have ventured further south in search of grazing land for their cattle, mainly due to the desertification of the Sahel region in northern Nigeria. The southward expansion of the desert is the main driver of the loss of an estimated 350,000 hectares of fertile land in Nigeria annually.
Land use changes are also a factor in the increased movement of the northern herders. A Reuters report states that in 1972 more than 60 per cent of the Middle Belt was grazing land, and farmland was limited to 14 per cent of the region. By 2013, grazing land had decreased to 38 per cent of the Middle Belt’s land area and farmland had increased to 42 per cent. The spread of farmland reduced the amount of open grazing land available to herders.
Various Nigerian governments have sought to manage the farmer-herder dispute since independence in 1960. The Northern Region Grazing Reserves Law of 1965 established 415 grazing reserves across the country, which could be exclusively used by herders to graze their livestock. Population growth, urbanisation and migration encroached on those reserves, however, leaving many herders without adequate access to natural resources.
After Benue and Taraba states enacted legislation that prohibits grazing on open land, herders were pushed out of those states and into neighbouring states such as Nasarawa and Adamawa. Some prominent southern Christians believe that does not go far enough and suggest that the herders should be declared terrorists, which would grant state security agencies greater powers to restrict their movement. That suggestion is just as likely to provoke further conflict between the two groups, however.
President Buhari claims that his government sought to resolve the herder-farmer dispute before the widespread violence that occurred in 2018. There is some truth to those claims as his administration introduced a National Grazing Reserve Bill into parliament in 2016, but it was defeated in the senate as legislators deemed it an unconstitutional overreach of federal government power. In 2018, the government announced the National Livestock Transformation Plan, which aims to establish 94 cattle ranches in ten pilot states. It is hoped that the plan will reduce tensions by encouraging herders to operate on land set aside for cattle grazing. The plan has generated confusion, with many farmers and landowners uncertain about the implications it could have for their own land rights. State governments, fearful that the plan will anger farmers, could object to its adoption and leave the situation unresolved.
While Atiku Abubakar, the main opposition candidate, has criticised Buhari for failing to fully eliminate Boko Haram and resolve the farmer-herder conflict, he has not articulated an alternative approach. Regardless of which candidate wins the presidential election, an uncompromising political environment is likely to obstruct the passage of proposals to reduce tensions between farmers and herders. That would probably dampen the agricultural investment needed to lift Nigerian food production and undermine food security across the country.