Why Nigeria Cannot Afford to Phase Out Open Grazing, Yet

Multiple reports of herder-farmer clashes are glad-handing government officials into making hard but needful policies about the open grazing of cattle in Nigeria. However, are these policies coming at the right time?

Right after Ndourori's son, Ismail, came of age, his father gave him two calves from the family’s herd. This is in addition to a female cow Ndourori designated upon Ismail’s birth. Naturally, the boy would grow up with the cows, eventually perfecting his cattle-raising methods and business within the family. Ndourori and his family are Fulani natives of Ngaski, Kebbi State, Nigeria. Unfortunately, the other tribes of the nation that have chance encounters with the likes of Ndourori find their pastoral and nomadic lifestyle strange.

Like many other Fulbe pastoralists of Sub-Saharan Africa, all the male children of Ndourori are cattle herders. As the family continues expanding, so does the cattle herd of each child. Before long, Ismail and the other male children, now heads of families themselves, got Ndourori's approval to venture out in search of pasture for their herds.

The transhumance style of cattle herding is popular among the Fulanis. Largely, this involves moving herds of cattle based on the prevalent weather and available pasture. Unfortunately, the once grass-growing savannah up north is fast giving way, thanks to desert encroachment and climate change. These ecological changes in the homestead of the Fulanis are causing them to prospect towards the South in search of green fodder for their cattle. Since then, farmer-herder conflicts have become a norm in the Nigerian news space.

However, the earlier we understand the peculiarities of the stakeholders involved, the easier it is to unbundle the situation. First off, we are facing a case of cultural dissonance. This means the awkwardness that washes our being when we encounter and have to tolerate people who do things differently from us.

For example, a young chap working for his uncle at a store in Ariaria market cannot imagine himself trekking for several days in the wilderness. For him, it defeats reason. However, that is not the case with a Fulani teenager. Ndourouri raised Ismail and his other sons to be nomads, and that way of life is second nature to them.

The Fulani tribe cuts across almost 15 countries in Africa. However, Nigeria is home to the largest Fulani population, with about 15.3 million of them populating the northern part of the country.

If a tribe in Nigeria once owned about 90% of all the ruminants in the country, then it is worth understudying them. This will reveal what makes them tick, their values, and if they possess the potential of being violent as many reports claim.

Some of the reported crises between farmers and herders involved grazing on farms and the destruction of crops. Likewise, there are reports that locals, wielding guns, are waylaying herdsmen and are taking away their cattle. Communal leaders have tried to intervene with little success, state governors are blowing hot, and 14 of them have already signed legislation banning open grazing in their states.

Punch Newspaper published an interview about the recurrent farmer-herder crisis in 2018. In the interview, Mr Saleh Alhassan, Secretary General of the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore Fulani Socio-Cultural Association made an interesting statement. According to him, beef will become unaffordable for the average Nigerian if bans on open grazing persist.

Well, that statement may be rife with exaggeration, but may eventually materialise into something close to the truth. Many Fulani herders are small-holders and may find it difficult to afford the expenses that come with land acquisition, for ranching. Likewise, most of the predominant cow breeds currently with pastoralists are attuned to open grazing.

To help the herders acclimatize to the policy change, pastoralists will need a buffer period for incorporating ranch-friendly breeds into their herd. This transition may take as long as 15 years.

Ranching would be a practical and peaceful way out of the multiple clashes involving itinerant herdsmen. However, the new policies are coming with notices that are quite short and may escalate the already existing conflicts.

This bottleneck can be compared to a recent dilemma of a governor in the United States. Governor Gavin Newsom has always been enthusiastic about making California a net-zero carbon state. So, some years back, he started campaigning in favour of shutting down the nuclear and gas power plants with a notice of roughly five years.

Now, Newsom’s idea is great, he wants his state to depend on clean energy sources. However, the transition notice was too short, and he eventually had to revert the policy, in exchange for a steady power supply.

To summarise Alhassan’s submission about the non-practicality of ranching, he said “People don’t understand that pastoral farming is not just a business; it’s a culture and if you want to transform a culture, you need to go through transitional phases.”

In a bid to solve the problem through a scheme, the federal government is proposing acquiring land for ranching. Interestingly, hectares of land around the country have been designated as Grazing Reserves, and this is as early as the 1960s. The Kachia Grazing Reserve in Kaduna State accommodates some 10,000 pastoralists and 40,000 cattle. However, there seems to be more to the problem than confining herders to Grazing Reserves and ranches.

From the little that has been said about the Fulanis, it is a no-brainer that cows are the core parts of their life and livelihood. Of course, not all Fulanis accompany cows with sticks and machetes, but a vast majority of them do. The relationship of the average Fulani with his cows is almost communal. So much so that they treat these animals like family. Is it not natural to have such close-knit with your animal if you have grown with it like Ismail?

The size of a Fulani man’s herd is a measure of his prestige and wealth. The larger the better. Interestingly, a low financial standing is not an excuse for not owning a herd of your own. As a pastoralist explained, “If someone does not have enough cows to give to all his sons then he will send his son to go and work for another herd so that he can work to earn a calf, the going rate is two years for a female and one year for a male.”

Also, it may interest you to know that Fulanis seldom slaughter cattle from their herd. It is not a religious or cultural taboo, but they would rather slaughter smaller ruminants during festivities. Often, they would retain virile and hardy cows for breeding and sell off those with not-so-spectacular traits. According to Ndourori, “We do not have a taste for meat outside of slaughtering practiced as part of Islamic religious festivals (Eid el Kabir and Eid el Fitr), and even then we would rather sacrifice a sheep.”

The average Southerner, communal leaders inclusive, know nothing about the Fulani culture. We may want to start from there. We cannot whitewash this tribe by claiming they are all peace and no war. However, just as we have in every other Nigerian tribe, criminals, peacemakers, and outliers fit into the demography.

Perhaps, if you knew a bit more about your neighbour, it would become easier to contain what you initially saw as excesses.