The flow of oil revenues from the 1970s onwards increased the market for pastoral products down South. However, in recent years, Nigeria has been constantly racked by civil strife, reconfiguring herder/farmer conflict in new and striking ways. According to recent report, the absence of any concerted government response is a matter for concern in terms of the country’s quest for integrated rural development.
For more than half of the 20th century, many of the low-lying areas next to rivers in Nigeria were hardly used by farmers because of problems of disease, particularly malaria and river-blindness. As a result, they were mainly used for grazing by nomadic herders and by fisher-folk. Although they had no officially certified ownership of these lands, they regarded themselves as the owners by right of use.
As farmers take up more of the river-bank for farms, they come into conflict with the other users, especially the herders and fisher-folk. The herders have been coming to the river for many years for the grass and tend to consider they have ownership rights.
When the herders arrive and find their grazing now covered by tomatoes they often become very angry. The farmers, often desperate to feed their families in a situation where the old rain-fed systems no longer work regard the herders as dangerous and intrusive. Too often there are fights and people are sometimes killed.
One particular case was the Jos Plateau which attracted pastoralists in the nineteenth century when its human population was relatively sparse. The discovery of tin and the subsequent growth of Jos, inevitably brought a major expansion of the farming population, and all but very marginal land was brought into cultivation. According to reports, colonial officials were already noting instances of farmer-grazier conflict on the Plateau as early as the 1940s. During the 1980s, some Fulbe from the Plateau moved permanently into the lowlands, especially into the forested region along the Benue, where farming populations are still sparse. Nonetheless, the disease environment and wide grasslands of the Plateau were too attractive not to be used and many groups persisted.
While most indigenous Plateau populations depended on upland rainfed cultivation, and the principal cereal crops were sorghum and millet, this provided a significant basis for interaction between the two groups. The farmers kept few cattle (although populations of the indigenous muturu, a humpless longhorn were probably higher than today) and the Fulbe could graze their cattle on the crop residues, with the farmers benefiting from the manure. However, once dry-season gardening began to take off, the river edges that had provided lush grazing were increasingly populated by farms. Moreover, the tubers and vegetables mainly grown there did not provide attractive residues for cattle and the farmers were increasingly preferring fertiliser.
According to the report, the switch to maize that followed the ADP system and the growth of potato cultivation made even crop residues in upland areas unsuitable for cattle. These agronomic changes did not take place without problems; pastoralists came to river-banks previously covered in grass to find tomatoes. Young men herded their cattle between upland cereal fields and the cattle strayed into the crops. However, these types of conflicts were usually settled informally and the types of violent clashes characteristic of some other northern states were not characteristic of Plateau. However, from 2001 onwards the situation has changed dramatically in character, with urban conflicts being replayed in rural areas with unattractive consequences for all sides. On the 8th of September, 2001, serious religious conflict broke out in Jos, and riots between Christians and Muslims led to substantial loss of life and property.
Pastoral cross-border movement
The report is of the opinion that herders in the arid Sahelian region move south every dry season to find water and pasture for their herds. Pastoralists all along the northern borders of Nigeria appear to have relatively untrammelled movement between neighbouring countries, especially Niger, but also Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Cameroun.
In Africa, the reliance on satellite imagery and maps have revealed the seasonal migrations of a particular group, marking dry and wet season grazing sites and perhaps a transit point.
However, no pastoral group had a transhumance route that could not be altered rapidly; indeed movement plans are often changed in the course of migration.
One of the demonstrations of this is the gradual southward relocation of the pastoral herds, as the semi-arid zone is increasingly cultivated. The main driving force of such colonisation is experimental migration to underexploited regions. It is true, however, that the scale of pastoral cross-border movement is extensive.
In many ways, according to the authors, it would be remarkable if the situation were otherwise, since the borders are long, generally remote and difficult to police. To try and put a scale or estimate the volume of this crossborder movement is difficult, but the National Livestock Resource Survey (NLRS) provides data on seasonal fluctuations, as cattle populations were estimated during both wet and dry seasons. The maximum number was between the range of 14,800,000 falling to 12,900,000, an intra-annual fluctuation of nearly two million cattle or 15% of the mean annual cattle population.
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