HUMAN FATALITIES AND THE QUESTION OF SUSTAINABILITY IN NIGERIA’S RANCHING SCHEMES

Abstract

Farmer-herder relations have been embroiled in conflict particularly in north-central states of Nigeria because of several factors which include environmental/climate change, ethno-religious conflicts, political competition, bad governance, and influx of small arms into the country. For herders, they perceive that open grazing is becoming difficult and their means of livelihood threatened. On the other hand, farmers are of the view that Fulani cattle herders are destructive and encroach their farmlands with the aim of becoming the owners. These two groups have fought violently to project their views. Consequently, the human fatalities arising from these clashes are enormous with Amnesty International reporting that between 2016 and 2018, over 3600 people have been killed and thousands displaced. Yet, nearly 200 million Nigerians depend on both herders and farmers for food security. The Nigerian government has responded to this problem through the promulgation of laws and funding of grazing reserves.  This article looks at the various ranching schemes since 1920s and assessed why they have failed to solve farmer-harder conflicts. Furthermore, special attention is given to the recently approved National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) which was meant to convert 177 grazing reserves out of a total of 415 spread across the country into national ranches. These ranches are designed to put an end to the clashes between herders and farmers as well as improve the ecosystem. The concern of this paper therefore is assessing the sustainability of the newly approved National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) by using historical research method to analyse failures of past government ranching schemes and how such pitfalls can be mitigated by using best practices that is resilient to climate change as done in New Zealand, India and across Europe.