The Futility of Violence: Resolving Nigeria's Herder-Farmer Conflict

Video Showing a farmland in Plateau State

It has gone more than a decade and half since the deadly herders’ quest for grazing lands started in Nigeria. Thousands have died and many more are still dying on a daily basis, yet the government seems to have given up on the issue.

Herders have lived in Nigeria for as long as the Nigerian nation existed. They have lived mostly in the far north to the middle belt area of the country. Desert advancement, triggered by climate change, forced them to start seeking pasture in other parts of the country.

Nigeria has been run without a drive. There was always the absence of strategy and little or no concern to the repercussion of doing so. It is expected that the government should have predicted the eventual competition for land between herders and farmers, taking a decision to deal with it from the onset –population will always grow and force increase demand for agricultural land.  

The administration of late President Mohammadu Buhari, in its bid to create jobs in the agro sector, banned the imports of certain agricultural produce. Food prices soared as a result. This triggered a rush to subsistent and commercial agriculture, increasing the demand for arable land, thereby eating up huge expanses of land that would have been used for grazing. It is easy to see this in herders’ habit of moving cattle to settlement areas to graze. I have had the chance of asking a herder the question of why they still move cattle to settlement areas, despite the abundance of grass in the vast bushes. His answer was that there is hardly a place left uncultivated.   

This year, I decided to check things for myself. By mid-May, when farmers where fully convinced that the rains have finally come, they moved their ploughs across the fields. I realized that, every day, the herders come with their cattle and stand in the perimeter of the farms, not knowing where to take the cattle to. If there are patches of land in the centre that have not been cultivated, the farmers go to the extent of inviting other farmers to cultivate them. According to them, if any patch of land is left uncultivated, it lures cattle, culminating in sabotage of surrounding farms. But after crops have been planted, weeded and nourished, however, farmers leave the farms, allowing the crops to mature. At that time, herders move their cattle into the gutters separating the farms to find the badly needed pasture. In doing this, crop damages are expected.

Population will continue to grow and more land will be needed to grow enough food to feed the growing population. This will intensify competition for land between cattle herders and farmers. Thus, as far as the conflict is concerned, there is no end in sight. This leaves us with just one option: going back to the issue of RUGA, which ensures cattle stay in restricted areas, feeding on specially grown pasture with high nutritional content. This was what President Buhari’s administration tried to introduce but was met with stiff resistance by certain stakeholders.

Why did the modern ranching idea of President Buhari fail to gain acceptance? Buhari’s government intended creating herders’ settlements called RUGA. According to Scan News, RUGA would have contained “ranches, grass or feed farms, abattoirs, dairy, meat and skin/leather processing plants, housing, religious houses, schools, roads, power and water supplies and the complete range of infrastructure required to support and sustain an ultra-modern local government area.” The sheer size of the land would have been equivalent to 216 local government areas. Nigeria has a total of 774 local government areas. In Plateau State with 17 local government areas, for instance, it would have meant conceding about 35% of the land to Fulani herders. Plateau has a tribal population of about 40.

The late President and former Governor of Kaduna State, Ahmed El-Rufai, had said in the past that the Fulani people killing Nigerian farmers were foreigners from Mali, Chad and the Central African Republic. So, why give this kind of land to foreigners? This weird design is the reason why the intellectual demography kicked against the project. The uneducated hated RUGA because it was trying to give their land to murders. 

As said in the preceding parts of this article, Nigeria’s has been run with disregard to the principles of nation-building. Why should we allow illegal immigrants to come to our country, cause widespread killings and end up enjoying the resources of the country in a way their nations couldn’t provide them? This points to a possibility of fraud in the design of RUGA, demonstrating that the project was ill-motivated. There are schools of thought that believe that the actual reason why land is in desperate need by herders is due to an unexplained increase in the population of herders across the country. Perhaps, there wouldn’t have been any competition for land in the first place.  

The deadly conflict has pointed a fing
er on the dangerous repercussion of leaving borders free to everyone. Solving the herder issue requires, first and foremost, taking the profile of all herders across the country to ascertain their actual nationalities, with deportation following where it becomes necessary. 

Causes of Fatal Mining Accidents on the Plateau

Illustration of mine collapse

Plateau State, Nigeria, is endowed with a variety of mineral resources, notably tin and columbite. Historically, the exploitation of these minerals attracted both local and international interests, shaping the cosmopolitan character of Jos, the state capital.

However, from the late 1970s, mining activities declined significantly due to a collapse in the global prices of tin and columbite, which were then the principal commercial minerals of value. In recent years, global advancements in science and technology have renewed demand for these minerals, alongside others that were previously discarded due to limited industrial application. This resurgence has reactivated artisanal and small-scale mining across Plateau State, providing a critical source of livelihood for large numbers of unemployed youths.

In much of the state, particularly in the northern zones, mineral deposits remain widely dispersed. Women, who often lack the capacity to sink shafts, typically engage in surface-level mining along water channels, where mineral concentrates settle after rainfall. Artisanal miners, in contrast, commonly dig shafts that extend between 50 and 70 feet in depth to access richer deposits, relying on rudimentary tools such as shovels, diggers, and improvised pulley systems.

Despite the economic opportunities mining presents, it is accompanied by severe occupational hazards. Fatal accidents are recurrent, often involving individuals motivated by poverty to supplement their income. For instance, reports indicate that even professionals, such as a primary school head teacher in December 2024, have lost their lives in mining pits while attempting to earn additional income for their families. Similarly, women and children have also been victims, highlighting the vulnerability of economically disadvantaged groups.

Several factors contribute to mining-related fatalities on the Plateau:

1. Mine collapses. After reaching the mineral “floor,” miners typically dig horizontal tunnels that may extend up to one hundred feet. The intervening walls are expected to serve as pillars to prevent collapse. However, when these pillars are weakened by excessive excavation—whether by miners seeking additional ore or children scavenging nearby—the structural integrity of the mine is compromised, leading to collapses that often trap or kill those underground.
2. Water inundation. Abandoned mines frequently accumulate water under high pressure. When active tunnels breach these water-filled shafts, sudden flooding occurs, overwhelming miners with little or no chance of escape due to the depth of the shafts and the ensuing confusion. Survival in such cases is minimal, as visibility and mobility underground are severely restricted.
3. Mechanical failures. Accidents also result from equipment malfunctions, particularly the snapping of steel cables used to lower or raise buckets of ore. Buckets carrying heavy loads may fall back into the pit, crushing miners, while cable failures during descent frequently cause severe injuries or fatalities.

The recovery of victims varies depending on the cause of the accident. Where flooding is involved, bodies can often be retrieved after pumping out water. In contrast, collapses that bury victims make recovery exceedingly difficult without the use of excavators, which require significant financial resources. In such circumstances, families often resort to conducting funeral rites at the site without retrieving the body.

Despite the high incidence of accidents, artisanal mining persists as an economic necessity. Temporary halts in mining following fatalities are typically symbolic gestures of respect rather than reconsiderations of the risks involved. Mining, in many cases, has served as a pathway out of poverty. For instance, women have been reported to earn as much as ₦130,000 within two days, while daring young men occasionally secure windfalls amounting to millions of naira. Consequently, a common refrain among Plateau residents underscores the indispensability of mining: “What would have become of us if there were no minerals in Plateau State