Read it again: Once, there used to be room for everyone in the “Middle Belt”. Each complemented the other: milk was traded for corn, leftover hay from harvests fed the livestock, and dung from cows fertilised the soil. Nigeria Herdsmen Fulani ... ...
Hausa-Fulani pastoralists move while their cattle grazing near some farms in the outskirts of Sokoto, Sokoto State, Nigeria, on April 22, 2019. – Massive expansion of farming in Nigeria has cut access to grazing land for nomadic herders and fuelled persistent violence. The herders cry, the packed crowd divides, and a vast column of cattle charges through the swirling dust, their long sharp horns swaying like a forest.
But most, fattened up with grain and fodder, show a shiny coat and have the thick thighs of good health. He explains the terms of the deal to his boss, a wealthy businessman in the northern Nigerian city of Kano.Twice a month, he crosses Nigeria by plane from north to south, travelling nearly a thousand kilometres between Kano and Lagos to sell the animals sent down south.
Each complemented the other: milk was traded for corn, leftover hay from harvests fed the livestock, and dung from cows fertilised the soil. A week after the killings, the 48-year-old farmer is still in shock, staring silently into space, the bullets that smashed into both her legs remain stuck inside.On her left wrist, a homemade bandage covers where the assailants hacked her with machetes.Were it not for a small cough that moves her chest, an observer might think she was already dead.It was just after dawn and Gabriel had been cooking millet porridge for breakfast when a crackle of automatic rifles rang out in Angwan Aku.
Or was it for revenge? Some blame a court decision on a land dispute, that ruled in favour of the villagers. Others claimed it was an argument over a woman. Settled farmers, mainly Christian but hailing from several different ethnic groups, boast of ancestral ties to the land, buttressing their claim to own it.
At the village of Dogon Noma, where 71 people were killed and around 250 houses burned in March, each grave was dug to hold 10 bodies.The aftermath of these attacks is invariably a grim ritual, and one that inevitably drips more poison into this conflict. Skeptics say that leaders find casting blame on scapegoats easier than talking about poverty, crippling hunger and unemployment — especially in an election year, like 2019.In his home in Kaduna — where Islamic Sharia is the law — he invites Muslim preachers to celebrate Christmas and Easter alongside him, and repeats to anyone who wants to hear: “Dialogue is the only way out.”“I am a peacemaker,” Buru says. “But I know that not everyone likes it.
The fact that they have suffered from the violence just as much is largely ignored: such as in February, when 130 of them were massacred in southern Kaduna state in one night alone. “We could have stayed in town, with all the modern comforts,” said Bilkisu, Jamo’s oldest daughter, her hair neatly tucked under a brown headscarf.
Ibrahim, 30, with a beard and his forehead tattooed with stars in the tradition of the Fulani, leaves his wife and children to zoom off for the half-hour trip on the rough tracks to the trading centre on a crossroads.There, among the tin-hut shops with phone network, he can finally call friends, listen to music and –- most importantly –- play pool, the main attraction.
The post-election violence that followed the presidential election soon divided the Kaduna region along the religious and ethnic lines of its many different peoples.The villages burned one after the other.Of their hundred cows, two-thirds were slaughtered. The sheep were stolen.“The change was difficult,” said Ibrahim. “We started to farm the land because we had lost a lot of animals, so we could not count on that to live on anymore.
But as the conflict spreads, the calls grow louder for the law to be implemented in the hope that the herders will settle for good — and that the violence ends.Kalashnikovs and codeine“With the theft of cattle, bandits and criminals are everywhere,” he said.
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