This section analyses different ways that insecurity manifests in relation to herders in the borderlands of northern Nigeria, looking at violent conflicts between farmers and herders and other communities, violent criminality, and armed insurgency.
Farmer-herder relations and conflict
Farmers and herders are not innately in conflict: crop agriculture and livestock in agro-pastoral areas such as northern Nigeria, southern Niger Republic, and northern Cameroon are interconnected and often complementary (see Box 5).20 Rather, relations between farmers and herders become strained and deteriorate into violent conflict under certain conditions. As pastoralists’ access to grazing land becomes more limited and mobility in some places is curtailed, and as favourable locations experience increasing arrivals of pastoralists, conflicts with farmers have become more common.
Transhumance stock routes enable pastoralists to move their herds and flocks, keeping animals away from crops. Violent conflicts can occur if stock routes are blocked – which forces herders to push their animals across farms, destroying crops – or if herders allow their animals to feed on crops. Stock routes can get blocked during the wet season, when rain-fed farms dominate the landscape, if they get cultivated by farmers. Grazing reserves are also important as reserved areas for livestock to feed and herders to live. But the usability of grazing reserves in northern Nigeria has diminished through neglect and encroachment. Most grazing reserves are neglected by the state and many have been parcelled out into farms. Water points that were originally built within them for livestock have tended not to be maintained and have fallen into disrepair, and the diversity of grasses and trees they once sustained has been lost or reduced. Today, grazing reserves in northern Nigeria only support a small percentage of the country’s cattle. Despite this, the remaining grazing reserves are still important to protect, and where possible they should be reclaimed and revived.
More land in the region is cultivated in the wet season, when rainfed crop cultivation is at its peak. But access to water is essential in the dry season, such as along rivers. As discussed above, dry season farming can benefit herders as well as farmers, as after crops are harvested the remaining biomass can be fed to cattle. These residues are purchased by the herders. However, in some areas of northern Nigeria, dry season farming along rivers and streams blocks herders from riverside grazing areas and water sources, or herders push their cattle onto irrigated farms. That dynamic was part of the build-up to violent conflict in Numan LGA of Adamawa State, for example (see Box 6).
Box 5: Farmer and herder interdependence
Mobile herders can be welcomed onto fallow or post-harvest fields as farmers want the cattle manure, or experience market benefits as pastoralists inject money into local rural economies. In some areas, farmers welcome herders at specific times of year but they do not want herds of cattle or sheep around during the main season of rain-fed farming. Migratory herders are usually expected to move on from such places before the planting season, when the rains begin. Encroachment by livestock onto farms when crops are being planted or just before the harvest can be devastating for farmers.
Where dry season agriculture has become economically important, farmers can grow crops throughout the dry season, and make money from their crops and by selling the residues from each harvest to migrant and local pastoralists. In some places the irrigation of fields also produces grasses that are good for livestock, and better than feed consisting only of crop residues. The necessity of this dry season exchange for herders was noted by a leader of the Sullubanko’en,21 a pastoral Fulani clan, in Gaya local government area (LGA) of Kano State. He told us that the spread of irrigated farming had benefits even for pastoralists because the post-harvest residues after each crop cycle sustained their cattle throughout the dry season. As a result, this household no longer migrated on dry season transhumance, but they did move their herds north into Niger Republic in the wet season.
Cattle manure is very good for soil fertility and maintenance of soil structure, and it is obtained by farmers for free in this grazing regime, saving money that could have been expended in purchasing chemical fertilisers. In some areas pastoralists are farming as well as herding, benefitting from this mixed economy. Economically, rural markets across the field sites covered in this study had crop and livestock sections and were strengthened by the money brought into each part of the market, with economic exchange between them.
Box 6: Farmer-herder conflict in Numan, Adamawa state
An upsurge in fighting in the Numan Federation in Adamawa State, north-east Nigeria, in 2017 illustrates how tensions between farmers and herders can mushroom into serious violence through a combination of interlocking drivers and triggers. The conflict was sparked by a dispute between a farmer and a herder (although precise accounts of exactly how violence originated vary), which rapidly escalated, with over 80 people (mainly children), and in some accounts more than 100, recorded killed in the first episode.23 This was followed by dozens more deaths in revenge attacks two weeks later, and in further cycles of violent conflict that ensued. The violence also led to the displacement of thousands of people from villages and pastoral camps in Numan LGA and surroundings.24
The lack of a judicial response and the apparent impunity for perpetrators of violence contributed to revenge attacks and the escalation of conflict.25 Since 2018, initiatives by NGOs, UN agencies, and the Adamawa State government to restore peace in Numan have had some impact in reducing the recurrence of violence, but the relationships between herders and farmers that existed before will be difficult to recover. While the events of November 2017 were on a scale not seen before, the Numan conflict has a history, with longstanding tensions and violent incidents along ethno-religious lines between the Bachama and Fulani communities, who are the main protagonists in this case.
Numan is located at the confluence of the Benue and Gongola rivers, and the conflict occurred in areas along the Benue River valley which both farmers and herders depend on for their livelihoods. The soil is fertile for cultivation, there are nutritious grasses for cattle, and water is available during the dry season. Tensions flare in the Benue River Basin in the dry season, as transhumant herds are traditionally brought from more arid areas further north and as the area is now heavily cultivated in the dry season for irrigated farming.
Aggravating this is that rights over land and water and access to pasture and farmland are framed in ethnic and religious terms. The Bachama are predominantly Christian while the Fulani are mainly Muslim, and there is a discordant relationship between the traditional leaders of the two groups – the Hama Bachama in Numan and the Lamido of Adamawa in Yola. This also has a history, as since the nineteenth century the Bachama have resisted domination by the Fulani emirates and asserted their autonomy in Adamawa, which is politically dominated by Muslims at the state level and in most local government areas.
But the Numan Federation is an exception as Christians are more numerous and have higher political representation there at the local level. They also experienced earlier exposure to Western education through mission schools. Fulani herders are viewed negatively by some in Numan, partly because of competition for land but also because they are seen through the prism of ethnic and religious politics, and believed to be linked to the Fulani emirate system, which some people in Numan oppose – notwithstanding that links between pastoralists and the emirates in northern Nigeria are anyway debatable.
XCEPT field research suggests that those involved in violence in Numan were mainly from the local area and surrounding states. There are common narratives in Numan about the involvement of pastoralists from outside Nigeria, but we did not find evidence for this.26 Field research also suggests that the violence triggered increased pastoralist movement out of Nigeria, for seasonal grazing and in some cases permanently. As the good riverine grazing areas around Numan were blocked by the conflict, herders changed their dry season transhumance to Cameroon. Since 2017, many herders have relocated more permanently to other areas of Adamawa State.27
With the return of relative peace, some herders have now returned to Numan LGA for grazing but it is mainly young men who bring their family herds, leaving women, children and elders behind in the neighbouring parts of Adamawa State that they were displaced to. Farmers impacted by the violence have been impoverished and are struggling to rebuild their lives having lost their houses and much of their capital. As some of the violence was intimate, between people who knew each other, trust is difficult to restore. There are however signs of improvement, particularly outside the areas worst impacted by the violence, due to local initiatives and dialogue.
Even where inter-community tensions are raised in areas where herds encroach on unharvested crops, widespread conflict is often avoided. Farmers in Ganye in southern Adamawa State in north-east Nigeria, for example, reported that the number of pastoralists migrating into their area in the dry season has been increasing year on year, driven by pressure on land, climate change and insecurity. They reported several cases of violence committed by transhumant herders. However, while there are tensions, there is also a degree of coexistence between farmers and herders in Ganye chiefdom. There have been several incidents of violence but to date they have contained these, managing the various grievances and infractions and mitigating the escalation of conflict.22
In all aspects of farmer-herder relations, much depends on local negotiation and agreements. Where there is animosity and mistrust between pastoralists and farmers, it is more difficult to sustain economic exchange between them. In parts of Adamawa and Taraba States, farmers burn their fields after harvesting their crops rather than keeping the crop residues for herders to graze their cattle on. Some farming communities distinguish between ‘local’ pastoralists, whom they live among and relate well with, and ‘migrating’ pastoralists, who come in the dry season, and some of whom cause damage to crops and commit crimes.
There are also herders who deliberately invade farms and destroy crops, sometimes acting with impunity, and it can be difficult for farmers to know which herders are which – herders who are well intentioned but struggle to keep their livestock off crops, particularly at the edge of routes, due to lack of space or accidental encroachment; or herders who are deliberately causing crop damage and provoking trouble. This can negatively impact general relations between migratory herders and farmers. Farmers also complain about under-age herders: boys who they perceive to be too young to control the cattle under their watch.
Disputes between herders and farmers over land and water tend only to translate into larger scale violent conflict when those disputes are exacerbated rather than mediated by local power structures and wider political and security trends (see Krätli and Toulmin, 2020a, 2020b; Moritz, 2006). Inter-ethnic and inter-religious rivalries and politicised narratives play a significant role in amplifying tensions (Adigun, 2022). The diminished capacity of the judicial system, police, and traditional authorities to maintain law and order and to resolve disputes before they escalate into violence, and the consistent failure to punish perpetrators of violence, mean that grievances are often unaddressed and victims of violence lack access to justice.
Weak capacity in the justice system is acute in rural borderland areas. These institutions are not well resourced and they have too few personnel relative to the populations they are meant to serve. Traditional institutions still have an important arbitration role and their offices are recognised and have social status, but much of their power has been transferred to politicians under the state governor. The example of the Numan crisis of November 2017 in Adamawa state (see Box 6) illustrates how institutional failures combined to trigger serious violence between pastoralists and farmers.
Violent crime: banditry and kidnapping
Banditry and kidnapping for ransom are major problems affecting rural communities in many of northern Nigeria’s borderlands and in parts of Cameroon. Violent crimes are impacting both farmers and pastoralists, and in many places have eclipsed farmer-herder conflicts in prominence and as the main security challenge.28 Kidnapping for ransom is a phenomenon of the past decade in central and northern Nigeria, spreading from the north-west to other parts of the region. Some of this violence is carried out by gangs originating among pastoralists, but in some cases men of other ethnic and religious backgrounds are also involved.29 They form networks between rural and urban areas in what has become a lucrative criminal activity, gaining illicit wealth from ransoms paid for the release of kidnapping victims.
Banditry can be large in scale, where raiders attack villages and camps in motorbike convoys at times more than 50 strong, killing and abducting people. This form of banditry began in Zamfara State – with its genesis around 2012 – and spread from there to other parts of north-west Nigeria and beyond to parts of the north-central and north-east.30 These bandits tend to be armed with AK47s and other automatic weapons including light machine guns. But kidnapping, armed robbery and cattle theft can also be carried out by smaller gangs. They vary in size, but in Adamawa State XCEPT researchers heard reports of kidnappers consisting of about half a dozen men in a gang.
Criminals abduct people from their houses or pastoral camps at night and establish bases in the bush, usually in hilly, wooded areas, where they keep their captives. The kidnappers often torture and sometimes kill their victims, resulting in trauma to individuals and families, along with heavy financial losses incurred from ransom payments.31 Some of the kidnappers are armed herders with cattle – often quite small numbers of cattle with more men than are needed to herd them, indicating they are probably cattle thieves – but other gangs do not rear livestock.
Field research in Adamawa State indicated that there is usually a rise in kidnapping for ransom during the dry season when transhumant pastoralists come into the area from further north in Nigeria. Transhumant or nomadic herders come from different directions, moving in small groups, many of which are not connected to each other. Some of these herding groups perpetrate crimes against others and against local farmers and herders in the places they migrate to. Transhumant pastoralists as a whole are not involved in crime, but those that are will be reflected in seasonal variations in crime rates. That was reported in Adamawa and Taraba States, and may also be the case elsewhere.32
A distinction was made between Fulani clans who had migrated from the north-west in recent years and Fulani clans who were longer established in Taraba State. In other locations, the difference between criminal gangs and the majority of herders who are not involved in or are opposed to crime was locally understood.33
Many farmers interviewed in XCEPT research associated herders with kidnapping and banditry, and Fulani young men are commonly linked to this form of criminality in public and political discourse.34 However, even where perpetrators of kidnapping for ransom are Fulani, other Fulani pastoralists are among the main victims. This form of crime is not ‘ethnic’ – kidnapping gangs target herding and farming communities, regardless of ethnicity. Their aim is to get ransom money from whoever they think can pay, not to pursue an ethnic agenda. But cases of kidnapping generate suspicion of herders per se, including of the majority who are legitimately grazing their animals and who are not engaged in crime. Generalisations that wrongly associate the Fulani population as a whole with banditry are feeding the broader stigmatisation of pastoralists as violent. While victims include both non-Fulani and Fulani, the crime wave is fuelling anti-Fulani sentiments and contributing to tensions between communities.
Evidence from the field suggests variation in the composition of kidnapping and bandit gangs. Some consist entirely of people of Fulani ethnicity, while others are ethnically mixed. Within the Fulani, certain clans are perceived to be more involved in this form of crime, although not all are involved and many are also themselves victims. Kidnappers do not operate alone – they rely on local informers from host communities to identify wealthy individuals who can pay high ransoms.35 XCEPT researchers met kidnapping victims from different backgrounds: a Chamba farmer was abducted from his house in Ganye, southern Adamawa, and tortured by kidnappers. He was released after paying a ransom of 10 million naira (about US$20,000 at the time). The kidnappers were Fulani but they were speaking Hausa, suggesting they were from north-west Nigeria, and likely had a local informer in the village who gave them the information they needed to target this specific individual, perceived to be a wealthy farmer.36
Researchers also met transhumant Fulani herders who had been kidnapped, in some cases more than once. Pastoralists are common targets of kidnapping in rural areas, because their families can quickly raise substantial ransom money by selling cattle. Very few cases are reported to the police or in the media. Testimonies of migrating pastoralists show that kidnapping is a driver of their migration; while many kidnapping gangs are indeed Fulani, the stigmatisation of herders in general as bandits or armed criminals fuels animosity against them and overlooks how they are commonly the victims of kidnapping.
The economic impacts of kidnapping have been severe and have elicited local responses. Vigilante groups in both farming and pastoral communities have been active in identifying and confronting kidnappers. In Taraba and parts of Adamawa, farmers and pastoralists were jointly participating in vigilante groups to combat kidnapping gangs. Vigilantes are often ethnically mixed and include Fulani pastoralists seeking to confront bandit gangs attacking their camps.
Where local vigilante and hunter groups are tasked with providing security, it raises issues around the resourcing and role of the police and other security agencies. Vigilantes have mounted effective responses to banditry in some areas, but their performance varies and some groups have perpetuated indiscriminate violence. In some cases, vigilante actions have involved killing suspects and taking the cattle, with questions over whether some of the suspects were in fact involved in kidnapping or banditry. A state-sponsored vigilante group called the Taraba Marshals operating in Taraba State south of the Benue River was particularly infamous during the last state administration (up to May 2023). This group allegedly killed many innocent people on the basis of ethnic and clan identity and stole their cattle, in the name of fighting crime. They also killed some prominent individuals who spoke out against them.37 In parts of Taraba State, vigilantes expelled and killed many herders from north-west Nigeria due to their alleged association with banditry. Some were likely involved but others were labelled guilty by association.
There is a need to monitor and regulate vigilantes because while they are part of the communities in which they operate and tend to have local support and legitimacy, some groups have reportedly been compromised by political capture and abuse of power. Other vigilantes are not so extreme and they have local knowledge and personnel that are important for rural security. In parts of Gombe, Bauchi, and northern Taraba, vigilante groups in villages were ethnically mixed and consisted mainly of men from pastoral and farming backgrounds who had mobilised to deter and confront criminals. Similarly in Cameroon, pastoral associations – especially the Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association (MBOSCUDA) – and pastoral leaders were working with the state to tackle kidnapping for ransom in the border areas with the Central African Republic and Chad.38
Insurgency in Borno and the Chad Basin
The security of herders in Borno State in north-east Nigeria and across the wider Chad Basin is affected by the Boko Haram insurgency – a violent conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 2009. The insurgency is region-specific, and so is covered in detail in the relevant part of the next section, which dives more deeply into geographically defined field research locations. Both pastoralists and farmers have been attacked by Boko Haram, with heavy loss of life and displacement. Boko Haram has attacked villages and camps, and raided pastoralist households stealing large numbers of cattle and sheep and killing and abducting people. Criminal and insurgent violence have become blurred, as Boko Haram uses the proceeds from cattle raids to fund its insurgency.
The highest levels of violence were recorded between 2014 and 2016 but the conflict has continued since then, with large parts of Borno State still controlled or rendered unsafe by armed opposition groups. Following a split in Boko Haram in 2016 that led to the creation of Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), armed conflict between Boko Haram, ISWAP and the militaries of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad is having enduring impacts in Borno and across the broader area of the Chad Basin. Pastoralists across Borno State continue to experience attacks and raids on their cattle. This includes the diverse herding groups around Lake Chad who have seen their herds significantly depleted due to raids by insurgents. A minority of herders around Lake Chad have also been recruited into the insurgency. Recruitment numbers have varied between locations and groups – for example, some pastoral groups see association with the insurgency as a way to assert control over territory. Overall, unlike jihadist groups in parts of the central Sahel, pastoralists have not formed the main recruitment base for Boko Haram, and some herders have fought against the insurgents. Boko Haram and the responses and strategies of pastoralists are explored in more detail below.
Footnotes
20 For a detailed historical geography of pastoralism in Nigeria, see Fricke (1979).
21 The Sullubanko’en (or Sullubawa in Hausa) are a Fulani clan originating in north-west Nigeria who are known for their pastoral mobility and animal husbandry but they generally only speak Hausa, not Fulfulde (the indigenous language of the Fulani).
22 Fieldwork in selected villages in Ganye LGA among Chamba farmers, August 2022. That was the latest of several field trips by the author to the area, working closely with a Chamba research assistant.
23 Meetings with IDPs displaced from Numan, in Fufore LGA and Mayo Belwa LGA, Adamawa State, August 2022. Researchers also had detailed conversations and interviewed victims and participants in this conflict in the aftermath of the initial violence of November 2017, while clashes were still occurring, in the rainy season of 2018.
24 Some of this internal displacement is recorded by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in its Displacement Tracking Matrix – see data for Adamawa State: https://dtm.iom.int/nigeria
25 This was stated very clearly by several pastoral leaders in the case of Numan. An Ardo (pastoral leader) recounted how their camps in the area he resided in, in Numan 1 and Volpi, were attacked from three different villages: allegedly Kikang, Shaforon and Kedemti. He said that eighty-three people, mostly young children, were killed by the attackers, but afterwards no one was arrested. He said the reprisal attack two weeks later would not have happened if the perpetrators of the mass violence they experienced had been brought to justice. Conversation with an Ardo displaced from Numan LGA, now living with his family in Fufore LGA, Adamawa State, 26 August 2022.
26 Interview with a Bachama representative from Numan Federation, September 2022.
27 Field visits to pastoral communities that had been residing in Numan LGA for decades but who are now in Mayo Belwa and Fufore LGAs.
28 Research findings from Nigeria and Cameroon fieldwork based on individual and group interviews with farmers and pastoralists, 2021–23. There is some variation depending on location, but kidnapping for ransom had increased in the past five years in our field sites in both countries and had become a serious and often expensive security problem for herders.
29 Fieldwork in Adamawa and Taraba States, including interviews with vigilantes who directly confront kidnapping gangs, 2021–22, and conversations in Abuja with researchers on north-west Nigeria.
30 Fieldwork among pastoralists and vigilantes by this research team in all these regions, 2020–23.
31 Interviews with victims of kidnapping in Fufore and Ganye LGAs, Adamawa State, from pastoralist and farming communities, August 2022.
32 Interviews in Ganye, Adamawa State, and Gashaka, Taraba State, with farmers, herders and vigilantes, November 2021 and August 2022.
33 Fieldwork interviews with herders and vigilantes in Gombe, Bauchi, Taraba and Adamawa States, 2022–23.
34 Direct observation from fieldwork but views of farmers can also be nuanced, as they know that it is not all herders that are into kidnapping. In some places vigilante groups from different communities work together against bandits. See also Adigun (2022) and Kabir (2021).
35 Interviews with vigilantes in Adamawa and Taraba States, 2022–23, and with victims of kidnapping.
36 This eyewitness account was narrated to field researchers in Ganye, southern Adamawa State, by the victim, who was kidnapped from his house at night and tortured by the gang. Interview in Ganye, 22 August 2022.
37 Field research in Taraba State, August 2023.
38 Interviews with state officials and MBOSCUDA in the East and North regions of Cameroon, November–December 2022.