The Telegraph (UK) - Adrian Blomfield
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| Clergymen carry white coffins containing the bodies of priests allegedly killed by Fulani herdsmen
Credit:
EMMY IBU/AFP
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In the
fertile grasslands of central Nigeria the roar of a motorcycle is enough
to instill fear in the Christian cattle herders stalked by an
increasingly bloody conflict.
The rev of an engine is the first warning sign that gangs of
kidnappers have emerged from the forest for their latest sortie in a
battle over diminishing farmland that appears to be drawn along
sectarian lines.
Across Africa’s most populous
country, an undeclared war, triggered in part by climate change and
fought over cattle, has turned Muslims and Christians against each other
in a confrontation so bitter it threatens to tear Nigeria apart.
Warring over cattle is almost as old as human history in parts of
Africa. But across a swath of the continent, cattle-related violence is
unleashing more bloodshed than at any time in living memory.
Fights over cattle have claimed thousands of lives in South Sudan and
the Central African Republic, worsening the humanitarian crises in two
states devastated by civil war. Militias raised by armed cattle herders
have brought anarchy to parts of northern Kenya, killing farmers white
and black.
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| Relatives cry as they mourn during the funeral service for 17 worshippers and two priests
Credit:
EMMY IBU/ AFP |
But
nowhere are the consequences more potentially dangerous than in Nigeria,
Africa’s richest, most populous and arguably most important country.
Hundreds
of thousands have fled their homes; farms and villages in many states
have been abandoned, raising fears of hunger, economic collapse and the
spread of disease in camps for the displaced.
The perceived aggressors are mostly semi-nomadic cattle herders from
the Fulani, an ethnic group numbering 20 million people with territory
across West and Central Africa.
Nigerian Fulani, who are mostly Muslim, have traditionally pastured their cattle mostly in the north of the country.
But water and pasture are both disappearing thanks to climate change.
In some northern states, up to 75 percent of grassland has been
swallowed up by desert. More frequent droughts, the disappearance of
water sources and attacks by Boko Haram have combined to drive the
Fulani and their herds into Nigeria’s fertile central farmlands, the
country’s so-called Middle Belt — where much of the population is
Christian.
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| A Fulani Muslim herder tends his cattle near Shendam, in central Nigeria
Credit:
Jacob Silberberg/Getty |
Attempts by local officials and farmers to protect their crops and husbandry have led to gruesome reprisals.
In recent months solitary farmers tending their crops have returned
to their villages, their severed hands stuffed into their pockets, in
attacks meant to terrify others into abandoning their fields to the
herders.
The villages themselves have come under attack by suspected Fulani
gangs on motorcyles. Last month, 71 people were killed in a village in
Kaduna state when the men on motorcycles roared in, opened fire on its
fleeing inhabitants, before setting fire to homes and hacking children
to death.
Not all
the attacks have been on Christians, and at least some of the victims
are Fulani killed by their fellow tribesmen. At least 20 people were
killed in a similar motorcycle attack on a village in the predominantly
Muslim state of Zamfara.
Nor are all the attacks carried out by Fulanis with cows. Speaking to
the lawlessness that has gripped northern Nigeria, Fulani youths
believed to have lost their herds have set up kidnapping camps in the
vast Rugu forest, from where they emerge on motorcycles to prey on
pedestrians walking along isolated roads.
At least 100 people were kidnapped in a two-day kidnapping spree in Kaduna state last month, according to local officials.
But whatever the motivation, the conflict is increasingly being
perceived as one between Muslims and Christians, a view only reinforced
by an attack on a church in Benue state in April when two priests and 17
of their congregation were killed as they said Mass.
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| A house in
the village of Bakin Kogi, in Kaduna state, northwest Nigeria, that was
recently attacked by suspected Fulani herdsmen
Credit:
STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP |
That
attack has had a profound effect on Nigeria’s Christians, persuading
many, justifiably or otherwise, that the Fulanis' real intent is
dispossession, territorial acquisition and the expansion of Islam — all
to be achieved by the ethnic cleansing of Christians.
“The reverend fathers were not farmers,” said Samuel Ortom, Benue
State’s Christian governor. “They were not in the farm. The church where
they were holding the Mass had no grass.
“The armed herdsmen have moved the narrative of the current crisis from search for grass to other obvious motives.”
As anger has mounted, Christian
tribesmen have formed armed vigilante groups to take on the herders when
they attack — and carry out reprisal attacks as well. In one recent
moment of vengeance, Fulanis say 50 of their members, including
children, were slaughtered.
Deepening the sense of crisis, prominent Christians have accused
Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president, of turning a blind eye to the
attacks because he too is a Fulani Muslim.
“The nation is now, more than ever so, divided along ethnic-religious
configurations,” said Emmanuel Onwukibo, the coordinator of the
Christian-dominated Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria.
“Nigerians in their thousands have been gruesomely despatched to the
Great Beyond by armed Fulani herdsmen who are being protected by the
powers that be.”
While diplomats concede that President Buhari’s response been slow,
there is no evidence to suggest he is siding with the herders, whose
representatives insist they are being grossly misrepresented and are as
much victims of the conflict as the Christian farmers.
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| A policeman
walks next to people kneeling as they pray for victims of violent
attacks across Nigeria at Ikeja St Leo Catholic Church in Lagos
Credit:
PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP |
The
president has ordered the army to take action to restore order, but so
stretched are the armed forces and so well armed their opponents —
thanks to vast quantities of weapons flooding into the country after
Libya’s civil war — that a military response is unlikely to work.
Instead, experts say, peaceful resolution is the only answer.
Under British rule, migration routes and grazing zones were set aside
for the Fulani herds but these have disappeared through a mixture of
corrupt land allocation and a soaring population of sedentary farmers in
the Middle Belt. Opening them up is crucial, the experts maintain.
But such steps are unlikely to satisfy increasingly angry Christian
officials and activists. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate and
author, has warned that the country could descend into Yugoslavia-style
ethnic bloodshed unless the Fulani attackers are tamed.
Mr Buhari is running out of time to take action that will convince
Christians that there is not a “grand mischievous plan for territorial
conquest, ethnic cleansing and religious imposition” by the Fulanis,
warns John Onaiyekan, the Catholic archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria’s
capital.
“The very survival of our nation is now at stake,” he said.
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