Mass killings continue across Nigeria, part of a long-running conflict between herders and farmers, with the state seemingly powerless to stop the violence

Rachel Amida*, a 52-year-old farmer in Adamawa state, north-eastern Nigeria, points to a small heap of maize laid on the ground just outside her home. “If it wasn’t for the herdsmen we would have had much more,” she says. “It is making it harder to survive when we are harvesting only a portion of what we sowed.”

On both sides of the Yola-Gombe road that runs through Adamawa’s vast countryside, small groups of herdsmen lead scores of cattle through the fields to feed.

The herders, mostly northern Fulani, are sometimes young children. Tiny figures beneath their large, wide-brimmed hats, they carry bows and arrows as they shuttle their cattle south in the heat. Yet their novel appearance belies a deadly crisis that, in the past few years, has spiralled out of control.

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On 3 November, near Amida’s home in a village in Demsa district, two people were killed by Fulani herdsmen. “I now have to send my son to my plot to till the land,” she says. “Before we thrashed the crops outside, but now we do them in here. It’s more dangerous there now.”

Farmers have accused the herdsmen of trespassing on their farmland to graze their cattle, destroying their crops.

The Fulani herdsmen have always ventured in search of land on which to feed their cattle; some are semi-nomadic, rooted in communities across Nigeria, while others travel along courses leading from Niger and Chad to Nigeria. But the combined effect of competition for land and droughts has made their search increasingly desperate.

Reprisal attacks and provocations exist on both sides. Cattle are sometimes stolen from herdsmen by criminal groups and communities often attack the herdsmen, assuming them to be a threat. But the conflict has been deadly for farming communities.

In August, more than 30 people were killed when herdsmen attacked villages in Demsa. In the three months prior to this, another 50 people were killed in escalating attacks that led to crisis meetings involving the governor of the state and local rulers.

The perennial conflict, for years confined mainly to “middle-belt” states, has now spread around the country, with mass killings increasingly reported in southern states over the past year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Fulani herdsman waters his cattle on a dusty plain in Adawama state. Photograph: Emmanuel Arewa/AFP/Getty Images

In Plateau state, where such conflict has a long history, some locals feel the attacks are part of an effort to get farming communities to leave their land, allowing the herdsmen to settle without competition for resources.

“That’s why they attack villages – they don’t just attack because of quarrels with villagers,” said a farmer who did not want to be named. “They burn homes and farms so that we will have to start again somewhere else. But we can’t, and will not leave because this is our land.”

According to John Reginald, a worker from Nigeria-based NGO Crudan, the attacks have met little resistance from police or the military. “This crisis has been able to go on partly because there is very little security present in village communities, and attacks in rural fields are hard to police,” he said. “So most times when the herdsmen attack, or when these issues take place, by the time people hear about it, it’s too late to stop.” According to the World Bank, 52% of Nigerians still live in rural areas, where people are most vulnerable to sporadic, sustained attacks.

The federal government’s response to the crisis has been widely criticised by the Nigerian press as inadequate. Increasingly, the killings have been viewed as motivated along religious and ethnic lines. President Muhammadu Buhari’s ethnicity – he is a Fulani Muslim – has fed accusations that the government is reluctant to confront a group it has sympathies with.

But according to Sola Tayo, a Nigeria specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, the crisis is more complicated. “I think this series of conflicts is multifaceted,” she explains. “The mistake is to reduce it to a simple clash of ethnicities or religions.

“There seems to be little appetite to address some of these historic grievances concerning grazing at a national level in government. Most of the discussion seems to be taking place at state level with some governors more keen to engage with farmers and herders to try and seek some sort of workable solution, while others are adopting a more hostile approach through tightening restrictions on nomadic herding practices.”

A plan by the federal government to allocate grazing reserves was rejected by Nigeria’s parliament. In opposition to the government’s position, some states such as Ekiti and Abia are passing legislation to allow them to limit the herdsmen’s activities, and prosecute those who graze on private land. In Kaduna, the state government has admitted to having paid compensation to aggrieved herdsmen to stop further killings.

In some cases, farmers have taken to burning their land after they’ve collected the harvest – to deny passing herdsmen farmland to graze on – despite the fact that it damages the soil.

The effects of the conflict on communities, particularly across the north-east, has been severe. A drought across the Lake Chad basin that has affected north-eastern Nigeria and other areas of west Africa has sharply decreased crop yields.

Adamawa, like much of north-eastern Nigeria, is hugely reliant on agriculture, and the population is now vulnerable. For many families, the crops are their sole source of income and food.

The crisis is even more acute for the 166,000 people living in Adamawa who were displaced by Boko Haram from their homes in neighbouring states.

Tearfund, an NGO working in Nigeria, has been helping internally displaced people in Adamawa, supplying farming tools and providing training on dry season farming techniques. “Most of the IDPs who are here were farmers or wives of farmers in states like Borno,” explains Munene Kibera, a disaster response manager at Tearfund. “It’s the main thing that they know how to do so it’s the best way for them to survive.”

The crisis has had a significant impact in Adamawa, a state with already stretched resources due to the huge influx of IDPs. The number of people reliant on land to farm for food is increasing just when climate change has made farming more difficult. As a result, the land disputes with the herdsmen are likely to increase. Despite the many deaths and federal government statements, there is little sign of the crisis coming to an end.

“All we can do is manage with what we can farm,” Amida says. “It is a bad situation, but we are powerless to stop it because they are armed and we are not.”

* Name changed to protect identity