The African Union estimates that there are about 300 million pastoralists, over a quarter of the population, living on about 43% of the continent’s total land mass. In Nigeria, the Fulbe ethnic group is known to pursuepastoralism not only as means of livelihood, but also as a way of life, mostly as nomadic and semi-settled in the various forests spanning the country. The Fulbe pastoralist today is in dilemma. While in the past he relied on his wealth of cattle, today most of the cattle have disappeared, either because ofcattle rustling, conflicts, or the consequences of climate change that brought about desertification and drought. The Fulbepastoralist group in Nigeria, has remained in his forest, but this time in hiding because of the new criminal trade of banditry and kidnapping for ransom, which many of its youth are involved. While in the past he was easily identified by his stick with which he controlled the movement of his cattle, today he is identified with the AK47 and other light weapons he uses to attack rural communities and also ambush to kidnap passengers and motorists traveling on the highways. The Fulbe pastoralist was known to be humble, kind, gentle, disciplined, honest, and selfless, but today he is perceived as a bandit, murderer, rapist, cattle rustler, and kidnapper. So, what happened?
I believe this One-Day National Security Summit with the theme “Exploring the Contemporary Challenges Facing Pastoralismand Fulbe with a View of Proffering Workable Solution in Curbing Insecurity Across the Nation” co-organized by the Fulbe umbrella organization for cattle breeders, MACBAN, and the Northern Consensus Movement, is an attempt to interrogate the predicaments of the Fulbe pastoralists in relation to the insecurity in Nigeria. It should be noted that contemporary challenges facing Fulbepastoralists are multifaceted and complex.
Fulbe is an ethnicity, and not all Fulbe are pastoralists. I am limiting my presentation to Fulbe pastoralists, specifically those residing in the forests that span Nigeria from north to south; east to west, and whose preoccupation is cattle herding. One of the challenges of the Fulbe pastoralists is that while their population has experienced exponential growth, the bulk of it is young, therefore they are experiencing youth bulge. This reflects the situation in the country as a whole, and as a matter of fact, the UN has projected that Nigeria’s populationwould double by 2050, and most of it would be young. Our concern here are the Fulbe pastoralist youth, most of whom are uneducated (both in Islamic and western education); unskilled; unemployable; andapparently, there is high rate of drug abuse among them. What is the percentage of the children of Fulbe pastoralists that have completed primary and secondary education, even with the in the nomadic educationprogram? What is the percentage that have acquired skills in the various trades available? And what the percentage that have knowledge on the Qur’an and Hadith, since majority of them are Muslims? There is a huge opportunity for the development of human capital in the Fulbe pastoralists communities, which unfortunately have remained stagnant for several decades.
The next dilemma of the Fulbe pastoralists is the fact that after centuries of nomadic orsemi-nomadic life, they have shied away from integration into the mainstream society; and past governments have made little or no efforts to integrate the group, therefore they are always forest bound and isolated. In the forests, they neither own land nor properties, but remain tenants that pay rents to landlordswherever their nomadic lifestyle takes them. They do not enjoy infrastructures, such as electricity, water systems, roads, railways, etc.; yet they pay tax and contribute significantly to the economy, at the least by providing sources of protein. The population of the Fulbe pastoralist is not adequately captured in the general population, if at all, through such systems of national identification number; international traveling passport; Bank Verification Number; driver’s license; population census; etc. The nomadic lifestyle and the inability to acquire the required education deny them the opportunities to be in the civil service; the armed forces; police and paramilitary institutions; the judiciary; and indeed, the private sector, especially the financial institutions. I can bet that the Fulbepastoralists community has not benefited from the N-Power social welfare project of this government in which billions of Naira have been spent, because in the first place, they have no known address; are mostly uneducated; lack access to the internet or computers; and also such information does notreach them at all. There is almost total absence of governance in their forest communities, especially arrangements for security, law and order, local administration, etc. Rather, the Fulbe pastoralists communities relied on theirtraditional rules and regulations governed by Pulaaku which, of course, has been eroded for a long time; and the wisdom of their parents and elders. However, contemporary happenings have shown that the youth have no longer respect their elders not listen to them, and community and family values have eroded.
Climate change which has led to land degradation through desertification and erosion, has resulted in forced migration of the Fulbe pastoralists. Although their lifestyle has always been nomadic, the impact of climate change has increased their movements from north to south in search of greener pastures, thus increasing the frequencies of herders-farmers conflicts in Nigeria. The impact of climate change does not only affect the movements of domestic Fulbe pastoralists, but also transhumance from other ECOWAS countries taking advantage of the Community’s protocol on the free movement of persons, goods, and services within the region. Among the transhumance crossingNigeria’s borders from other countries, such as Niger and Chad, are the Bororo, who move like whirlwind across country, not only do they destroy farmlands and cause havoc, but they also contribute to the deteriorating relationship between domestic Fulbe and sedentary farmers in various locations in the country. A contributing factor to this problem is the lack of implementation of the 1998 of the ECOWAS Protocol on Transhumance, which spelt out the rules and conditions for the movement of transhumance across borders within the region.
A few years back before late President Yar’Adua’s amnesty intervention program, the word kidnapping was only associated with the Niger Delta militants, when they were kidnapping oil workers. However, today that word is fully attached to the Fulbe pastoralist, which the southern media tagged as “Fulani killer herdsmen”. The Fulbe pastoralist youth have added the word banditry to their current trademark, and unlike the Niger Delta militant whose victims were mostly oil workers, the Fulbe bandit has made almost everyone his victim so long a person is unfortunate to come across any of its gangs. He is known to invade rural communities in most of the northwest, to abduct people, kill and destroy properties. The Abuja-Kaduna Highway and Kaduna-BirninGwari road are particularly attractive to him, and so many people have been traumatized and victimized by his violent criminal activities, and it is because of this situationthat the Kaduna state government has recentlythreatened to relocate three communities along the highway. Since the train terrorist attack bysuspected members of the Ansaru or BokoHaram terrorist group, many people going to Kaduna from Abuja prefer to take a flight to Kano, and then drive to Kaduna from Kano, all in the effort to avoid being vulnerable to kidnappers of the Abuja-Kaduna highway. But not everyone can afford it, therefore many others just brave it and take their chances with the hope that they arrive their destination safely. Traveling by road in most parts of the north west is a nightmare, especially now that the trains have been stopped due to terrorists threats. There is no age or gender barrier for the kidnappers: they kidnap the young and old; women (and pregnant women too) and men; boys and girls, including infants. Many female and male victims reported being raped by their abductors, and many others have been forcefully married off to fellow kidnappers. The ethnicity and religion of their victims are immaterial. The major interest of the kidnapper is the ransom to be paid, which he usually demands in millions of Naira, and on certain occasions he kills his victims even after payments of ransom. The kidnappers also trade-in their victims in exchange for money just as is done to slaves, and actually they enslave their victims.
Although these criminals are a minority in the Fulbe pastoralists community, they have succeeded in creating a perception that all Fulbe pastoralists are violent and kidnappers, resulting in profiling and stereotype. As part of the consequences of their criminal activities, innocent and law-abiding Fulbepastoralists have been attacked and forcefully ejected from their settlements, and cattle seized or killed, in the southeast and southwest. It was also because of them that some states passed the anti-grazing laws to curtail the movements of pastoralists and their cattle, designed to checkmate their activities. It is also because of their activities of kidnapping students that many schools, including tertiary institutions, in the northwestand north central have remained closed. It is also a fact that their activities have discouraged investments that would have boosted the northern economy, because nobody or institution would invest in an environment pervasive with insecurity. The violent activities of kidnapping and banditry have made foreign countries to give travel advisory to their citizens against traveling to northern Nigeria. The fact that their activities fall into the definition of terrorism, they have succeeded in worsening Nigeria’s position in the Global Terrorism Index, which the 2022 GTI puts Nigeria as the 6th most terrorizedcountry in the world, among 163 countries assessed. Likewise, with the score of 8.80 points on the scale of 0 to 10 in 2021
