For long cattle rustling has been going on in the fringes of Northern Nigeria, in remote villages without access to security operatives or high presence of administrative authorities. The bandits themselves largely made up of Fulani men come in huge numbers brandishing AK47s, sub-machines terrorizing villages, killing men, women and children and herding cows out of settlements across grazing reserves to unknown settlements. However, the tragedy of these events is its near black-out on the news radar, as the bigger insurgency gripping North East has overshadowed it. Therein lays the danger that this if left unchecked might grow a situation that not only poses a danger to the lives of pastoralists but can hinder the supply of beef in Nigeria and West African countries thereby driving higher the cost of meat and affecting nutrition tables of millions of Nigerians.
Within the last one year according to investigations by Daily Trust Newspaper a total of 322 herders were killed and 60,000 cattle were stolen due to rustling activities in some Northern states last year. By my estimation cattle worth 500 million Naira have been stolen by the militia Fulani since 2013.
In the same report the paper quoted officials of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), that the 322 herders who are mostly Fulani, were killed in Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Nasarawa, Zamfara and Niger States last year alone, though rustling activities are taking tolls in other states like Sokoto, Yobe, Bauchi, Kwara and Gombe resulting in the loss of thousands of cattle, our correspondents couldn’t obtain casualty figures of herders from either the police or MACBAN officials in those states.
According to Daily Trust Newspaper Plateau, 87 herders lost their lives and 7,200 cattle were stolen with 125 herders killed and 12,000 cattle rustled in its neighboring Nasarawa while 17 herders were killed in Benue with 2000 cattle rustled.
Zamfara State is also badly hit with 2,462 cattle rustled while 37 cattle rearers lost their lives. In the same period, 15 herders were killed in Niger State with 500 cattle taken away while 700 cattle were stolen and 17 people were killed in Taraba State.
29,040 cattle were rustled in Gombe, 92 in Yobe, 99 in Sokoto, 204 in Bauchi and 204 in Kwara, even as there were no casualty figures of herders.
The bandits used to target herders in the rural areas; however they have become emboldened and are now targeting commercial farms across the North.
This trend has led the government to commence the setting up of helicopter pad in the trouble states and permanent deployment of helicopters to Benue and Nasarawa States, however beyond the deployment, government must get to the root cause of this banditry as it continues to fight it, in fighting it to, it will be worthwhile to begin to use GIS and other tracking devices to fight this new war. Our frontiers are increasing on every day; the Fulani cattle militia presents us with a clear and present danger, the government must stop them before it’s too late.
Alkasim Abdulkadir is a multi-media journalist, he has worked as a Producer for BBC Media Action and as a news contributor for CNN, Aljazeera, France 24 and Guardian UK. He is Contributing Editor at The Trent.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
