This section looks at causes and manifestations of insecurity and violence affecting and involving herder communities in the borderlands and across borders in northern Nigeria.
A hostile environment for herders
The borderlands of northern Nigeria are in certain respects a hostile environment for pastoralism. There is variation between states and communities, and across borders – it is not a uniform picture – but there is a widespread sense of crisis among herder communities. The general situation is one of diminishing access to grazing land, pasture and water, with government policies and security interventions that work against the collective interests and needs of pastoralists.
Herders experience multiple types of insecurity and find it increasingly difficult to predictably pursue safe and productive lifestyles and livelihoods. Banditry and kidnapping, the Boko Haram armed insurgency, and violent conflict between communities have made life precarious in many rural areas of Nigeria and in parts of the wider region of west and central Africa. Herders and farmers are displaced from the hotspots of kidnapping, banditry and violent conflict into areas with lower levels of insecurity within Nigeria and across borders into neighbouring countries. Those who are unable or unwilling to move have to cope with the insecurity around them.
There is a perception among some groups that herders cause the ‘hostile environment’ in the borderlands of northern Nigeria and often operate above the law.2 This perception reinforces negative perceptions and discrimination against herders, and contributes to tensions and instability. There have indeed been growing problems with violence and crime within pastoral communities and involving youths with pastoral Fulani backgrounds. This is reflected in the surge in kidnapping for ransom, rustling of cattle and raiding of villages – collectively referred to as banditry – which has become a major security problem across large parts of Nigeria.
However, most violent crimes such as kidnapping and cattle rustling are carried out by criminal gangs that consist of people from pastoral backgrounds as well as ethnically mixed gangs. Armed gangs kidnap people whose families they think can pay, usually supported by local informants who reside within towns and villages. Targets are selected opportunistically, and pastoralists are among the main victims because livestock can be quickly sold to pay ransoms.3 Ethnicity is not a definitive factor in who is targeted, but if a gang leader and members are predominantly Fulani and the victims are mixed or are non-Fulani, it can increase local tensions.4
An additional perception is that herders from outside Nigeria are responsible for insecurity inside the country, and therefore that stemming the flow of herders moving into Nigeria will help manage insecurity.5 XCEPT research found little evidence that herders from outside Nigeria are fuelling violence, and patterns of pastoral mobility across borders are often misunderstood. Many drivers of violence in Nigeria come from inside its borders. Fulani pastoralists are present across west and central Africa, and this can be instrumentalised by local political or traditional leaders who portray insecurity as being caused by foreign herders who are usurping the rights of local communities. In some cases, this discourse may be used to detract from their own governance failings or, during the Buhari administration (2015–23), as a populist tactic used by opposition parties at the state level against the ruling party at the federal level. Calling into question the citizenship of pastoralists is also a way of questioning their local civic rights and user rights to land and water. In villages and districts in northern Nigeria, there are local pastoralists who are well known and who have been there for generations, even if they move their cattle on transhumance seasonally. Farmers in Adamawa State, for example, clearly distinguish between different groups of herders – those who are locally based but who move seasonally; and those who arrive from outside the area. However, the protection of grazing land, transhumance corridors and campsites are not guaranteed even when herders have been living in a place or visiting it seasonally for many years. This is one of the causes of conflict.6
In the case of farmer-herder conflicts, there are usually local efforts to resolve them, with varying levels of success. Conflict prevention and resolution can occur relatively informally between the parties involved, such as a farmer and a herder and their families, or if that local level mediation does not work the disputes can be taken to the police and courts. Where there is larger-scale violence between communities, representatives including traditional and religious leaders, youth leaders, state officials, the police, and in some cases outside mediators are involved. The Nigerian state and international organisations are hardly addressing the challenges that contribute to the escalation of tensions. Violence could more usefully be prevented through identifying and tackling its root causes, while also supporting traditional institutions and other local actors focused on conflict resolution.
There has been displacement of herders and farmers from the hotspots of kidnapping, banditry and violent conflict into areas with lower levels of insecurity within northern Nigeria and across borders into neighbouring countries. Those who are not able or willing to move have to cope with the insecurity around them. People respond to conflict and the presence of armed groups in different ways. In the case of pastoralists, some relocate, some reach an accommodation with armed actors, some join them, while others try to stay neutral, or resist. Banditry and insurgency are not discrete ‘incidents’ or ‘cases’ that can be addressed individually, but are often linked to armed movements. Non-state armed groups are enriching themselves through violent crime (notably kidnapping and cattle rustling) or fighting for a religious ideology, even while their existence can be traced to issues around governance and Nigeria’s political economy. These armed groups are a reality that farmers and herders must navigate.
Pastoral migration, transhumance, security and insecurity
Pastoral mobility varies in purpose, distance, scale and in terms of who migrates. Transhumance is the seasonal movement of herders and their animals, usually back and forth between pastures and a home base, which may be a camp or village. Some transhumance movements occur across borders such as between Niger and Nigeria or Nigeria and Cameroon. This form of mobility is distinct from longer-term pastoral migration that involves relocation to different parts of a country or to other countries. Mobility is also needed for daily grazing to take livestock out to pasture and water, and within a season herders may move camps to respond to variations in local conditions.
Transhumance movements occur due to seasonal constraints in the availability of water and pasture. In semi-arid and dryland areas, being able to move livestock between spatially and temporally variable grazing areas and water points is an essential part of how livestock are sustained. While many transhumance patterns are long-established, they can change over time in response to environmental and political conditions. Transhumance is also determined by the farming cycle – from the planting of crops through to harvest – which strongly influences pastoralists’ access to land. Different crops are harvested at different times, and harvest times vary between individual farmers and locations. This reinforces the importance of good communication between herders and farmers, so that the movement of herders into a farming area occurs at an agreed time, such as after the harvest of certain crops.
In northern Nigeria and more widely in the Sahel, a key factor in pastoral movement is the long dry season, which in the far north occurs – without rain – from October until as late as June. Grasses and vegetation diminish while surface and ground water can dry up or become inaccessible. For herds and flocks to remain in one place during this period they would need animal feed and plentiful water. Mobility is an essential part of pastoral adaptation to dry season aridity and inter-annual variations in rainfall – with more variability expected due to climate change. Pastoralists also move their livestock in the wet season, in search of uncultivated land during the period of rain-fed farming.
Much pastoral movement is peaceful. But herders can be exposed to risks from armed groups or criminal gangs, and herding groups that engage in crimes such as kidnapping for ransom or that graze their livestock on crops are also a source of insecurity for farmers and for other herders. Loss of grazing land and the blockage of transhumance corridors impact pastoral mobility and increase the risk of livestock encroaching onto cropland. Where transhumance is viewed as a conflict trigger it is often because the stock routes and the pastures that herders are moving between have been cultivated.
Both seasonal transhumance and longer-term migration occur in response to different push and pull factors. There has been steady migration, dating back decades but accelerating in recent years, of herders in northern Nigeria moving eastwards and southwards (Stenning, 1957, 1959; Mohammadou, 1978; Boutrais, 1995; Blench, 1983, 1994; Turner, 2022). Herders from north-west Nigeria, in particular, have moved to the north-east, in some cases on the way towards central Africa, to relocate families and herds on a permanent basis. This is driven by a combination of land pressure in the north-west – as there is limited bush left for grazing – and violent conflict caused by banditry and the spread of armed groups in several north-western states. They have been moving to states such as Adamawa, Taraba, and parts of Bauchi, Gombe and Yobe.
Some herders have also crossed from north-west Nigeria into Niger Republic – or relocated their livestock there, where they were less likely to be raided by bandits. In this case, the movement of livestock and herders north from Nigeria to Niger was a response to insecurity and land pressure rather than seasonal pasture and water scarcity. If the security situation improved in north-west Nigeria, with a reduced risk of kidnapping and cattle rustling, it is conceivable that they would return as by origin these are Fulani herders from Nigeria, even if they have cross-border family ties in Niger Republic.
Pressure on land and pastoralist responses
Diminished user rights and reduced access to land for pastoralists can be a major cause of social instability in rural Nigeria and a problem for the pastoral economy. Population growth has contributed to the cultivation of areas that herders previously relied on for grazing, with a well-documented loss of grazing reserves and grazing land across north and central Nigeria7 (see Box 4 on Jigawa State). Additionally, the blockage of livestock routes by farms and infrastructure has made mobility increasingly difficult for pastoralists.
A sense of injustice is being exacerbated by the acquisition of large tracts of land by political elites, traditional rulers, and businessmen – often taking land from peasant farmers and herders.8 This leads to displacement and impoverishment and increases pressure on land elsewhere. There has also been a decline in the nutritional quality of grasses found on remaining grazing areas, with a reduction in plant diversity. This is caused by overgrazing and more widely by habitat loss, land degradation, deforestation and the increased use of powerful herbicides in agricultural practice that kill off grasses. In some areas of northern Nigeria there has been a spread of invasive weeds on pastoral grazing lands.9 Affected rangelands are rendered much less productive or even useless for grazing animals.
Box 4: Increasing cultivation and land grabbing in Jigawa state
Satellite mapping of cultivated areas in Jigawa State in northern Nigeria analysed for the purposes of this study shows a significant increase in the farmed area in a six-year period when comparing the wet seasons of 2016 and 2022. The areas in pink in the Jigawa State maps below mark the areas under cultivation, for 2016 in the first map and 2022 in the second. The satellite images indicate a 25 per cent increase in crop cover in this period. As pastoralists depend on land that is not cultivated for grazing their cattle and small ruminants, a corresponding reduction in pastoral land during the wet season in Jigawa State can be inferred.
Levels of violent conflict in Jigawa State are low compared to the other states of north-west Nigeria and the neighbouring north-eastern state of Yobe. However, research findings indicated that state policies on land were causing grievances and considerable hardship in many rural areas, potentially creating conditions for increased tensions.10 The seizing of farmland and pastoral land from communities and families by politicians in Jigawa and in corporate deals has led to displacement and impoverishment in the affected areas, and forced some pastoralists impacted to migrate elsewhere – out of Nigeria or to other states.
Dry season farming using rivers, ponds and in some areas small bore holes to irrigate crops has expanded in the parts of northern Nigeria where water is available throughout the year. Farming in the dry season through irrigation brings economic benefits to farmers and improves food security, but if cattle and other livestock are blocked from accessing water, it can cause tension and conflict between farmers and herders. This is explored among other factors, including the institutional failure to protect grazing land, in the section below on farmer-herder conflict.
Pastoralists respond to land pressures and rights of access primarily through either relocation or resistance, both of which have social consequences. Land pressures have a central role in shaping transhumance patterns, including across borders. Many pastoral households in northern Nigeria have already reduced their mobility or settled due to severe constraints on movement and reduced access to land. However, those with larger herds continue to move their cattle on transhumance even after the family establishes a permanent camp or settlement. Land pressure also motivates some herders to relocate from one country to another. Loss of grazing land was cited by many herders in the borderlands of north-east Nigeria and in Cameroon as being the principal factor leading them to migrate with their cattle and other livestock to central Africa (see section below), where the availability and quality of grazing land is greater, primarily due to the lower population density.11
In general, reduced mobility and sedentarisation of herds results in a reduction in cattle numbers, and, by extension, a reduction in the wealth of those households. If pastoralists completely settle, they tend to shift towards an agro-pastoral system, depending more on crop farming than pastoralism. The dominant trend, however, is for part of the family to settle and establish a permanent camp or house in a village while at the same time retaining cattle, which requires mobility. The herders looking after the cattle continue with transhumance while the rest of the family is settled and typically cultivates grains such as maize or guinea corn for subsistence.12 In this scenario, the cattle – and often sheep and goats – continue to be the family’s main source of wealth and their principal asset, but they are looked after by pastoral youth; the rest of the family only see the cattle for part of the year – for example in the rainy season.
There are also still nomadic pastoral families who continue to be mobile and do not farm – where the family unit migrates periodically, especially in the wet season or after a few years in one area. But larger pastoral herds cannot be kept on a sedentary basis in the current system where rangelands are limited and shrinking, water and natural grasses are scarce, especially in the dry season, and supplementary animal feed is expensive. Mobile pastoralists, rather than sedentary agro-pastoralists, have the most livestock wealth – the highest numbers of cattle and the largest herds. For pastoralists to settle and stop migrating would mean selling their cattle, or at least reducing herds to a subsistence level. That is why they retain their mobility, which is a rational adaptation to environmental and climatic conditions but is only sustainable if pastoral land and grazing routes are protected.
Climate change and ecology
Changes in climate and ecology are impacting both pastoralism and agriculture. Climate change is altering rainfall patterns, increasing the intensity of heat and affecting the availability of water in the dry season – especially towards the end of the dry season, with acute water shortages common from February to May.13 In particular, rainfall has become more erratic, with a later start to the rainy season and breaks for weeks at a time after the onset of the first rains. There is a clear need for better water storage and conservation, through infrastructure and improved management of the landscape and vegetation.
In recent years there has also been a prolongation of the rainy season in some areas and more variation in the distribution and volume of rainfall within it and inter-annually.14 These climatic changes are impacting agricultural yields, altering the species and varieties of crops that farmers plant and the timing of the agricultural cycle, and making transhumance movements less predictable.15 Changes in rainfall brought about by climate change that affect the timings of planting, harvesting and transhumance in turn increase the potential for farmers and herders to come into conflict.
The impacts of changing rainfall patterns on herders include water stress and lack of pasture in the late dry season when the rains are delayed, affecting the nutrition of animals and people. However, rainfall is quite variable geographically and temporally in northern Nigeria and in Cameroon and improved data is needed to understand current patterns better. Mobility allows pastoralists to move their herds to where there is available pasture and water when sudden changes occur. But this needs to be managed so that scarcity in one area does not translate into encroachment onto cropland or conservation areas in another.
Exclusion and stigmatisation
Pastoralists tend not to be empowered in decision making on land issues. Despite having a significant population across central and northern Nigeria, pastoralists are spread across a large area and are usually a minority relative to the rest of the nearby population. The participation and representation of pastoralists in politics has been limited due to their mobile lifestyle and as they live in rural constituencies away from state capitals. They often do not have voter cards, for example – although this is beginning to change in some states.16 The loss of wealth and status experienced by many pastoralists in Nigeria as their livelihoods and way of life are undermined has pushed some of the pastoral youth into drug abuse and criminality.17
Ecological zones of Nigeria and the surrounding region
Some herders we spoke with in the field complained of stigmatisation to the extent that they are frequently verbally abused and shamed by members of the public and mistreated while herding their livestock along roads or through towns or villages, which they do because livestock routes have been blocked. They are often the target of bandits and they sustain losses – unreported or underreported by public institutions and the media – in clashes with farmers. Herders are often excessively fined for encroaching onto farms and extorted by judicial authorities, the police, some community leaders and even their own associations, such as the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association.18
At the same time, farmers complain that herders often damage crops without being caught or facing accountability, for example during night-time grazing. Farmers have in some cases accumulated grievances so that when a herder is caught and accused of damaging crops, even if the losses are minor, there is an incentive to obtain maximum and often excessive compensation. As herders have capital, they raise money to settle such cases by selling livestock. If the process is perceived to be unjust, grudges develop and may remain unresolved over a long period, becoming a precursor to violent conflicts.19
Footnotes
2 In the Nigerian press, herders are frequently blamed for much violence and kidnapping. In the sense of herders being involved in violent incidents this is correct, but the implicit assumption or impression that herders in general are violent is not correct and compounds this ‘hostile environment’. During fieldwork in Adamawa State, farmers usually distinguished between herders who they have problems with and those who they coexist well with. In conflicts, hostility becomes more generalised on both sides.
3 Stories of herders being kidnapped are now common in pastoral communities. Researchers met victims who were ransomed and frequently heard of cases. And it was reported in livestock markets that some of the cattle being sold were to pay ransoms. The rate of kidnapping is higher in some states than others and even within states there are known danger zones.
4 Such crimes can be perceived as a negative reflection on Fulani people as a whole, increasing suspicion. This is evident across Nigeria and it was expressed in the field in Adamawa State, for example, notably among Chamba farmers and vigilantes in Ganye – even as they have maintained relative peace there – and in Numan, where there has been violent conflict between Bachama and Fulani (see below). Fieldwork in Adamawa State in 2022–23.
5 This is a common assumption but usually made without evidence. If herders from outside Nigeria are present in the country and involved in conflicts there, this is undocumented and, most likely, exaggerated. A report by the International Crisis Group (2017: iii) recommends that Nigeria ‘Coordinate with neighbours to stem cross-border movement of non-Nigerian armed herders’, although the report does not provide evidence, give indication of scale of movement, nor discuss movement of herders from Nigeria into neighbouring countries.
6 Scholarship on pastoralists in other countries also documents these difficulties. Detailed empirical work has been carried out in the Far North of Cameroon, for example (see Moritz et al., 2013).
7 For example, see Federal Government of Nigeria (2015), Momale (2001) and Abdullahi et al. (2015). For a report on the loss of grazing reserves due to encroachment: Federal Government of Nigeria (2018).
8 Field research on land-grabbing in Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi, and Jigawa States, 2022–23. Initial findings published in: Yusufu Bala Usman Institute (2022).
9 All of these points are widely reported by pastoralists in the field, in previous work and research for this study. For example, author fieldwork in Yobe State (2019), Jigawa State (2019, 2022) and in Adamawa and Taraba States (2021–23). The method of research here is ethno-ecology, recording changes in the distribution of grasses, shrubs and trees that herders utilise for grazing and for household use.
10 Fieldwork among pastoralists in Hadejia and Kiri Kasama LGAs, August 2019 and February 2022, and in Guri and Dutse LGAs, February 2022, Jigawa State.
11 Field notes from research among pastoralists in Adamawa State, August–September 2022, and Nigerian herders after they crossed into Cameroon, November–December 2022.
12 We have observed this pattern across northern and central Nigeria over the past decade. See also Momale (2016), who documents this trend and its social implications in north-west Nigeria.
13 This assessment and what follows is based on observations by respondents in the field (farmers and pastoralists), personal observations, and scientific evidence: Doherty, et al. (2022); and selected chapters in Sultan et al. (2017).
14 This assessment is based on observations by respondents in the field (farmers and pastoralists), personal observations, and scientific evidence: Doherty, et al. (2022); and selected chapters in Sultan et al. (2017).
15 Fieldwork among farmers and herders in Ganye, Adamawa State, August 2022.
16 In Adamawa State the nomadic youth organisation, Bibbe Gaccungol, registered over 50,000 pastoralists before the 2023 elections, giving that constituency more political voice and relevance than in any previous elections. Fieldwork and meetings in Adamawa State, 2022–23.
17 Fieldwork from 2020–23 for this study, and existing studies highlighting the relevance of drug abuse to violent crime and conflict (Blench, 2018).
18 These were among complaints recorded during fieldwork among herders in north-east Nigeria, 2022–23, including when crossing the Nigeria–Cameroon border. Vulnerability of herders to predatory law enforcement is also identified by Krätli and Toulmin (2020a: 50).
19 Project fieldwork and Krätli and Toulmin (2020a: 48-50).