The bloody cattle conflict pushing Nigeria to the edge of civil war
Christian farmers come under attack as scarce resources drive Muslim herdsmen into their lands
In the fertile grasslands of central Nigeria, the roar of a motorcycle is enough to instill fear in the Christian cattle herders stalked by an increasingly bloody conflict. The rev of an engine is the first sign that gangs of kidnappers have emerged from the forest for their latest sortie in a battle over diminishing farmland that appears to be drawn along sectarian lines.
Across Africa’s most populous country, an undeclared war, triggered in part by climate change and fought over cattle, has turned Muslims and Christians against each other in a confrontation so bitter it threatens to tear Nigeria apart. Fights over cattle have claimed thousands of lives in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, two states devastated by civil war. Militias raised by armed cattle herders have brought anarchy to parts of northern Kenya, killing farmers white and black.
But nowhere are the consequences more potentially dangerous than in Nigeria, Africa’s richest and arguably most important country. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, while farms and villages in many states have been abandoned, raising fears of hunger, economic collapse and spread of disease in camps for the displaced.
The perceived aggressors are mostly semi-nomadic cattle herders from the Fulani, an ethnic group numbering 20million people with territory across west and central Africa.
Nigerian Fulani, who are mostly Muslim, have traditionally pastured their cattle mostly in the north of the country. However, in some northern states, up to 75 per cent of grassland has been swallowed up by desert. More frequent droughts, the disappearance of water sources and attacks by Boko Haram have combined to drive the Fulani and their herds into Nigeria’s fertile central farmlands, the so-called Middle Belt – where much of the population is Christian.
Attempts by officials and farmers to protect their crops and husbandry have led to gruesome reprisals. Farmers tending crops have returned to their villages, their severed hands stuffed into their pockets, in attacks meant to terrify others into abandoning their fields. Villages have also come under attack by suspected Fulani gangs on motorcycles. Last month, 71 people were killed in a village in Kaduna state when gangs opened fire on its fleeing inhabitants, before setting fire to homes and hacking children to death.
Not all the attacks have been on Christians, with some Fulani killed by fellow tribesmen. At least 20 people were killed in an attack on a village in the mostly Muslim state of Zamfara.
Nor are all the attacks carried out by Fulanis with cows. Fulani youths believed to have lost their herds have set up kidnapping camps in the vast Rugu forest, from where they emerge on motorcycles to prey on pedestrians walking along isolated roads. At least 100 people were kidnapped in a two-day spree in Kaduna state last month, according to local officials.
The conflict is increasingly being perceived as one between Muslims and Christians, a view reinforced by an attack on a church in Benue state in April when two priests and 17 of their congregation were killed as they said Mass. The attack persuaded many of
‘The armed herdsmen have moved the narrative of the current crisis from search for grass to other obvious motives’
Nigeria’s Christians that the Fulanis’ real intent is dispossession, territorial acquisition and the expansion of Islam – all to be achieved by the ethnic cleansing of Christians.
“The reverend fathers were not farmers,” said Samuel Ortom, Benue State’s Christian governor. “The armed herdsmen have moved the narrative of the current crisis from search for grass to other obvious motives.”
Christian tribesmen have formed armed vigilante groups to take on the herders when they attack, and to carry out reprisal attacks. In one recent moment of vengeance, Fulanis say 50 of their members, including children, were slaughtered.
Prominent Christians have accused Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president, of turning a blind eye to the attacks because he is a Fulani Muslim.
“Nigerians in their thousands have been gruesomely dispatched to the Great Beyond by armed Fulani herdsmen who are being protected by the powers that be,” said Emmanuel Onwukibo, the coordinator of the Christian-dominated Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria. There is no evidence to suggest Mr Buhari is siding with the herders, whose representatives insist they are as much victims as the Christian farmers. The president has ordered the army to restore order, but so stretched are the armed forces and so well armed their opponents that a military response is unlikely to work. Instead, experts say, peaceful resolution is the only answer.
Under British rule, migration routes and grazing zones were set aside for the Fulani herds but these have disappeared through a mixture of corrupt land allocation and a soaring population of sedentary farmers in the Middle Belt. Opening them up is crucial, the experts maintain.
John Onaiyekan, the Catholic archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, has warned that Mr Buhari is running out of time to take action that will convince Christians that there is not a “grand mischievous plan for territorial conquest, ethnic cleansing and religious imposition” by the Fulanis. “The very survival of our nation is now at stake,” he said.