Nigeria’s farmers under attack

FARMERS in Nigeria are under attack, with little to no protection from the government. They are frequently attacked by insurgents such as Boko Haram and slain in the most horrific ways.

In October, Boko Haram fighters killed 22 farmers working in irrigation fields in two separate incidents.

In November, Boko Haram insurgents killed dozens of farmworkers and wounded several in rice fields near the north-east city of Maiduguri.

According to reports, the assailants tied up the agricultural workers and slit their throats in the village of Koshobe.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari described the terrorist killings as “insane”.

Authorities called the attack one of the worst in recent months in a region where Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa insurgent groups are active.

Buhari and the military remain under pressure to contain the security crisis but have fallen drastically short in quelling the insurgency affecting the region, in which tens of thousands have been killed or abducted.

According to Deutsche Welle, at least 36 000 people have been killed and 2 million displaced since Boko Haram launched its jihadi insurgency in north-east Nigeria in 2009.

However, there is a second lethal threat facing the farmers.

An independent 2018 report by the International Crisis Group showed more than 1 800 farmers had been killed in the first half of the year in clashes with herders, or about six times the number killed by Boko Haram.

According to a report by The Washington Post, periodic clashes between farmers and herders continue to disrupt Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the part of the country that divides the north and south and is home to the capital, Abuja. Competition for resources has played a major role in the conflict.

Desertification and the Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria’s north-east, among other factors, have begun to push the herders farther south, where they encounter settled communities that are struggling with their own population booms, wrote The Washington Post.

The source of the clashes may be the battle for resources, but the conflict also has ethnic and religious undertones.

Most herders are Muslims from the Fulani ethnic group, while many farmers in the region tend to be Christian.

According to the International Crisis Group, despite the federal government taking steps to stop the bloodshed by deploying additional police and army units, as well as launching two military operations to curb violence across the region, the killings continue.

Civil society has called on the federal government several times to recruit more soldiers and members of other security forces to protect the farmers. The International Crisis Group said in its report that the federal government should better protect herders and farmers, prosecute attackers and carry out its National Livestock Transformation Plan.

It said state governments should roll out open grazing bans in phases, all while communal leaders curb inflammatory rhetoric and encourage compromise.