Plateau Conundrum, the Fulani and Nigerians

The restoration of peace and cordial inter-community relations on the Plateau is very critical to the survival of the Nigerian project. Many have said that Plateau State has provided so much beauty, warmth, opportunities and excellent community relations for Nigeria that we must do all we can to restore that.

If we do not, we take huge risk, as Col John Dung (rtd) said yesterday; “Plateau is a mini Nigeria, if the killing continue un-arrested I fear that it may boomerang, leading to the disintegration of Nigeria” (Thisday, 15/7/12) The real question however is how you stop the killing in a way that will produce satisfaction and closure to all sides in the conflict.

The announcement yesterday that the Special Task Force (STF), charged with maintaining peace in Plateau state, gave Fulani inhabitants of some crisis-prone villages 48 hours to vacate their communities with all their property. The STF spokesman, Salisu Mustapha, said to have announced that a “military operation” is going on in the affected areas located in Barkin-Ladi and Riyom Local Governments. The statement did not say where the inhabitants of the villages should head to, and whether they would be resettled. A resident of one of the villages said it was unfair and uncharitable for the STF to order them out of their ancestral villages without providing alternatives. “We know no other home,” he said. “Where do they want us to go? Why must they treat us as if we are foreigners in our own country (Trust, 15/7.12)?” In his response to the announcement, Bashir Kurfi of the Network for Justice described the announcement as an “open declaration of war against a section of citizens” (Sunday Trust, 15/7.12). The announcement is indeed strange because two facts are known about the conflict in the Plateau. The first is that both sides have militia that have been engaged in killings and destruction of property. The second is that the majority of the community on both sides are not belligerents and a craving for a return of peace. Picking a whole community and giving them marching orders to vacate their habitations is not only unfair but is likely to escalate the conflict.

The Plateau conflict reached its peak on Sunday, 4th July when a serving senator, Gyang Dantong, and Gyang Fulani, Majority Leader in the Plateau House of Assembly, lost their lives in a stampede after gunmen attacked them at Maseh village during a mass burial ceremony of several dozen people killed after an earlier attack. There has been a series of allegations of these attacks being the handiwork of Fulani herdsmen or rogue troops. It is important that the real culprits are identified and sanction rather than take the route of stigmatizing a whole community.

In his response to the recent killings, Gen Jerry Useni has drawn attention to the divisive role played by Gover- nor Jang. In his own words; He is not relating to people, the Beroms themselves are divided – we have the Du and the other Beroms. Then you have the non-Beroms including the Hausa-Fulanis and ourselves (Daily Trust 12/7/12). His argument is that if you allow a process of discriminating against and excluding the other to continue, there will be no victor at the end of the day as each seeks to vanquish the other. A durable solution must be based on justice and the rights of all Nigerian citizens to live and work where they choose to must be respected in any solution that is just.

Be that as it may, there is indeed rising problems linked to the livelihoods of Fulani herdsmen in many parts of the country and indeed all over West Africa. Not too long ago, many people were killed and thou- sands displaced in Benue and Nasarawa states following clashes between nomadic Fulani cattle herders and sedentary farmers. The fighting began when Fulani cattle herders found some of their livestock dead, said Con- rad Wergba, Benue state’s information commissioner. The cattle herders retaliated by attacking villages of the Tiv ethnic group in both Benue and Nasarawa states. It is a recurring problem throughout West Africa when cattle belonging to the Fulani destroy crops belonging to farmers who in turn kill cattle and attack the Fulani. The Fulani revenge; and the spiral of revenge killings expands.

A combination of factors based on climate change and poor governance are at the base of the problem. As the northern part of West Africa dries up due to climate change, the land can no longer support the animal stocks in the Sahel where grazing demands creates further fragility of the ecosystem and pushing the desert south- wards. Since the only useful land to herders is south of the desert, they move their herds toward the agricultural areas of the sedentary farmers. Naturally, crops destroyed by animals are a source of tension for farmers who struggle to grow enough food to feed themselves in an unforgiving environment.

The Fulani, also called Peul or Fulbe, are an idiom for a much wider problem because they are found all over West Africa, from Lake Chad to the Atlantic coast, with concentrations in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, and Niger. Given this dispersion of Fulani groups, the Fulani have had centuries of mutu- ally beneficial relations with their sedentary neighbours until they became victims of the pulse model. The pulse model is used by archaeologists to describe the tendency of the Sahara desert to “move” South over the years, having socio-economic impacts on the peoples living in its path. The receding amounts of open water mean smaller “microenvironments” and greater contact between people seeking the same resource. The competition means that the increased contact results in increased conflict. In these countries, the corporate identity established by such groups through years of sedentary is being disturbed by the process of desertification. Movement of the desert southwards is forcing communities to relocate, and this is indirectly causing conflict.

During the colonial era, cattle routes were protected and nomadic groups had secure routes through which they passed. The south-bound movement of the Sahara, and the breakdown of governance in the region, has meant that these routes have now for the most part been cultivated and it is becoming impossible to move animals without trespassing cultivated land.

The issue is becoming a genuinely West African problem because some communities have expelled Fulani in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. This is a dangerous development because the Fulani are fighting back so the conflicts will escalate. As is generally known, any threat to the existence of a group breeds a determination to fight back.
It seems to me that the core problem that is exacerbating the Fulani question in West Africa is the inability of our governments to address the governance of pastoral routes and manage the ecosystem in a way in which farmers and pastoralists and benefit from each other rather than fight. The route proposed by the STF order of ordering the Fulani out of two local governments is not helpful as it will only transfer the problem to other local governments where local farmers are likely to learn from the STF tactic of expelling in-coming Fulani. The solution must be sought in improving governance of cattle routes and commitment to rebuilding community relations.