Worried by the frightening dimension of the herdsmen/farmers clashes across the country, lecturers of the University of Jos recently organised a symposium where they brainstormed on the menace that has claimed several lives and displaced millions.
Among other concerns, the lecturers focused on why the violence had lingered for so long, the contending issues, hope for an early end to the gory sights, and whether the violence was beyond the security agencies.
Other issues included the allegation that the military was colluding with the attackers, the deafening calls on Nigerians to defend themselves, and the fear that the nation could descend into anarchy and possible disintegration.
To set the tone for the symposium that had the theme: “Ecology, class and categorical politics in contemporary Nigeria’’, Dr. Chris Piwuna, Chairman, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), decried the incessant killings that had festered for more than 20 years, regretting that the situation was getting even worse.
“After 20 years of killing, maiming and arson, it is time for us, as a nation, to reflect and sheath our sword. It is time to reason, time to dialogue, time to be brave and sit around the table and talk.
“As a union, we do not accept the puerile and absurd argument that people that have lived together for hundreds of years can no longer live together.
“It is time to be frank about the issues. Our rivers are red with blood; our fields are piled with bones of those slaughtered in their homes, and our children fear to go to school because they could be abducted. We cannot continue like this,’’ he said.
Piwuna declared that the solution to the security challenges could only be found within the communities, urging stakeholders to work toward reaching a consensus while challenging government to provide platforms for consistent dialogue.
He said that ASUU, as leaders of the intellectual community, must rise up to the challenge and seek a solution to the problem before it snowballed into a monster that could swallow everyone.
On her part, Prof. Lami Lombin, Dean, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and former Director General, National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI), Vom, who was the chairman of the occasion, said that the first step toward resolving the crisis was for the herdsmen to embrace a modern way of breeding cows, in view of the realities on ground.
“Arable land is in short supply following rising demand and climatic changes that have destroyed a vast of the natural habitat.
“Pastoralists must be dynamic; many things have changed. In 1950, we had a population of 33 million. Now, we have 182 million. It means the fight for limited resources has become fiercer.
“The situation in the Lake Chad basin has worsened an already bad situation. It used to be 25,000 kilometres, but it has shrunk to 2,500 kilometres, displacing more than 10.5 million people.’’
Lombin explained further: “Our population has grown astronomically, while land resources have shrunk drastically. What it means is that there are more farmers, industrialists and cow breeders competing for land resources that get smaller by the day.
“The world has moved on; cows are being ranched in view of the dictates of realities. Herdsmen in Nigeria must move with the times in the interest of peace, the cows, and the general society. The simple truth is that the world can no longer accommodate open grazing which the Nigerian herdsman is insisting on,’’ she said
She added that demographic changes and overgrazing had led to massive conflicts in the struggle for resources, noting that the conflict had been worsened by Nigeria’s porous borders and a poor data base that had made it impossible to determine the number of cattle to cater for.
Lombin challenged cattle breeders to buy into current realities and adjust because their age-old lifestyle was no longer sustainable in today’s world.
“The simple reality is that people are tired of violence and want to sleep at night,’’ she declared.
Prof. Omotoye Olorode of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Agwo-Iwoye, Guest Speaker at the occasion, said that the search for a solution must begin with the search for the real owners of the cows grazing on Nigerian fields.
“If we can get the owners of the cows, we shall track down those arming the `unknown gunmen’ to kill our rural dwellers.’’
He accused the Nigerian ruling class of destroying the country by purchasing and amassing all the arable land to themselves, leaving the poor majority to fight over the little land resource left for them.
“Nigerians must ask questions and insist on answers. Who are these gunmen? Who is arming them? Why has it been difficult to arrest and prosecute the attackers? How many herdsmen are in the country and what is the size of their herds?
“Government must also be sincere in the search for peace and involve all stakeholders in the process. Over time, government has worked with a few elites that have neither cows nor farmlands. We must reach out to the ordinary peasant directly involved in farming and cattle breeding,’’ he said.
Prof. Ochapa Onazi, former Vice Chancellor, University of Jos, who shared Olorode’s opinion, emphasised the need to involve the real herdsman and farmer in the search for peace between the duo.
“The two groups have always lived together and are, therefore, in the best position to know what went wrong. They are in the best position to determine how and why things got so bad and should be central to any attempt to broker peace,’’ he said.
Prof. Monday Mangvwat, another former Vice Chancellor of the university, while calling for a return to the traditional way of settling disputes between farmers and herdsmen, suggested that traditional rulers be central to the quest for a permanent solution to the crisis.
He, however, advised Fulani herdsmen resident in Plateau communities to always report strange herdsmen in their midst, and also support efforts by their host toward ensuring that such strangers did not constitute a security risk.
Mangvwat also appealed to the Fulani ethnic group to reject the perception that they had an unforgiving nature, saying that such impression was not good for them as a race.
Prof. Hayward Mafuyai, immediate past Vice Chancellor of the university, accused the resident Fulani herdsmen of shielding the attackers.
“It is difficult to accept the claims of the resident Fulani that the attackers are unknown to them because the attackers have always spared the residences of the Fulani people. We do not think that such is a coincidence. Our belief is that the attackers work in concert with the resident Fulani people.
“If the resident Fulani herdsmen do not expose the marauders, that mutual trust that existed in the past will be eroded and the situation will continue to degenerate from bad to worse,’’ he said.
Prof. Rotgag Gofwen of the Department of Sociology, in his contribution, blamed the violence on the “desperation to grab land by conquest’’.
Noting that the attackers had always occupied villages hit, Gofwen said that such occupation signified that the areas had been conquered and their ancestral lands taken over by the conquerors.
Gofwen accused the security agencies of “not doing enough’’, and alleged that security personnel deployed to protect the rural areas had often remained in the towns and highways, leaving the villages vulnerable to attacks.
“The attackers are in the rural areas, but the Policemen and Special Task Force (STF) personnel remain on the roads checking vehicles.
“In many cases, when attacks are reported to the security personnel, they hardly bother. They often claim to be waiting for instruction from `above’ which hardly ever comes, leaving the helpless victims at the mercy of the attackers,’’ he said.
Malam Sani Suleiman, a herdsman, said that a lot of frustration was massing up for both the herdsmen and the farmers because each side was feeling robbed of justice.
“The farmer feels frustrated while the herdsman feel cheated. Any attempt to broker peace must involve the real farmers and herdsmen because they feel the heat of this crisis,’’ he said.
He said that Fulani herdsmen were against ranching, colonies, and grazing reserves because no one had actually taken time to educate them on the benefits of such policies and what they entailed.
Suleiman also accused the nation’s policy makers of paying lip service to the lingering clashes, saying that bills for the establishment of a commission for nomads and the resuscitation of grazing reserves and routes had been “abandoned’’ by the National Assembly.
He urged leaders to encourage herdsmen and farmers to work together to fight cattle rustling, banditry and armed robbery, and accused the ruling elites of promoting divisive tendencies that had pitted the herdsman against the farmer with whom he had enjoyed a symbiotic relationship over time.
For Prof. Stephen Banfa, the solution to the crisis rests on a return to the history of how people and nations rose from one stage to another.
“Nations have moved and so must Nigeria and its herdsmen. The herdsmen cannot remain static in a pastoralist and medieval economy in an era of capitalist economy. They cannot be moving from place to place. They must embrace ranching as the best way to breed cattle,’’ he said.
He also accused government of hypocrisy, wondering how attackers could still be “unknown’’ after they had occupied the residences of their victims and converted their food, livestock and ancestral land into their own.
“My feeling is that those occupying the fled villages are already settling in `conquered’ territories which makes nonsense of the claims that the attackers are unknown gunmen,’’ he said.
Positing that justice was a precondition for peace, he tasked government to chase out invaders that had occupied “conquered’’ territories in Plateau, Kaduna, Benue, Taraba and other states, and ensure the return of the sacked villagers to their ancestral land to ease tension and restore peace.
But Prof. Zanzan Uyi of the Faculty of Architecture, however, had a totally different view.
“We are told that it is a problem caused by desert encroachment. Israel, Libya, and other Arab nations are 90 per cent desert lands, but export food and fruits. Can’t Nigeria do same and claim lands encroached upon by the desert?
“Again, only recently, Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano invited all herdsmen to relocate to Kano. He said that Kano had enough land and water for them. Colorado in the U. S. is less than Kano in size, but hosts more cows than those in Nigeria. Let the herdsmen heed that call and move into Kano where there is a ready environment for their cattle.’’
Some discussants, however, opined that the problem had remained intractable because it had not been properly diagnosed.
One such discussant, Malam Adamu Aje, decried the conflicting interpretation of the crisis by major stakeholders, and declared that such confusion had “turned a simple disagreement into a huge crisis”.
“The Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, says the violence is a communal clash; Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai traces its roots to earlier attacks on foreign herdsmen after the 2011 election, while others have blamed the attacks on insurgents from Libya.
“Not long ago, government officials blamed the attacks on new laws banning open grazing in some states. Others trace the crisis to encroachment on traditional grazing routes. What it means is that we are yet to get to the root of the problem. Unless we get to that root, we shall not come out of this hole,’’ he said.
Other discussants opined that the violence was just part of a larger expansionist agenda, and advised anyone championing such agenda to discard it “so as not to plunge the country into anarchy and chaos”.
One such discussant, Prof. Charles Gonyok, said that the crisis was assuming frightening dimension with anarchy gradually setting in.
“Those concerned must move fast to end the killing because the affected communities might react when pushed to the wall. When that happens, the result will be unpredictable,’’ he said.
Gonyok said that the attacks in Plateau were more frightening because the area worst affected is Daffo that was renowned for producing Irish potatoes, maize, rice and millet.
“If the situation continues, hunger is imminent because farmers have been chased off the farms and are afraid to return.
“In major farming areas like Hotom, Werem, Maiduna, Ganda, Ngakudu, Joshol and Hurti, the farmers have fled.
“The rains are here, but instead of the potatoes, we have weeds on the fields. Government must take drastic steps to end the violence in the interest of the nation,’’ he said.
Overwhelmed by the torrents of contributions, the lecturers resolved to form cluster groups that would dissect the contending issues and come up with a position paper to be submitted to government.
Analysts, while commending the lecturers for the effort, have urged them to organise more platforms for such frank discussions that would serve as breeding grounds for ideas.
They say that such platforms will give perceived “enemies’’ the opportunity to voice out their anger, frustrations, grievances and concerns, which will facilitate the search for common grounds.
Piwuna is on the same page with the analysts.
“The discussions will be sustained; we must, collectively, seek out ideas and explore them. Ultimately, a cross fertilisation of these ideas will form the basis upon which the contending issues will be resolved toward building a consensus that will facilitate the return of peace to the troubled rural communities.”
NAN
