Herdsmen and their cattle rearing activities are major sources of concern for many African countries. In some instances clashes have erupted resulting in deaths between these nomads and members of communities in which they live.
This month some deaths were recorded in Nigeria were At least a dozen people were killed in apparent tit-for-tat clashes between farmers and cattle herders in central Nigeria.
The violence between Christian Bachama farmers and Muslim Fulani herders happened in the Lau district of Taraba state. Police said the 12 people were killed when unidentified gunmen attacked Fulani settlements. A reprisal attack followed and resolving the crisis has continued with little success.
Officials in Ghana are now struggling to calm tension in parts of the country where the activities of Fulanis herdsmen has led to clashes and deaths.
For years these herdsmen have been accused of raping women and girls and killing local farmers whose farms are also destroyed by cattle grazing.
In Ghana one woman told Africa Feeds that “The way these Fulanis are treating us women, its worrying. They attack us in our farms and rape us and kill our husbands. We are pleading to our President to deal with this issue and take them aware from our community.”
“In my community, we are unable to go to the farm because of the Fulanis. Fulanis have shot at soldiers and this is creating tension in our community. We have now been barred from going to the farm to avoid being attacked and killed. We are helpless. If they are attacking soldiers what about we the ordinary people?” another woman also narrated.
There have been deaths on both sides, locals and Fulanis have suffered losses from recent clashes. School children are unable to attend school in Eastern Ghana and the Ashanti region due to security concerns.
Ghana’s security agencies have launched a major operation to drive the herdsmen out of troubled communities. Ghana’s interior minister Ambrose Dery is concerns about the crisis and says efforts are ongoing to protect lives and property especially school children.
He said “The Fulani menace has been with us for a long time, we sent a number of police there to kind of bring things under control. But three communities, we have people go to school but the teachers are not there. So the police have been directed to make sure they provide security for the teachers to be able to go. But then trans-humans is not peculiar to Ghana, its across the whole sub-region.”
The deployment of security officials to communities where the crisis is getting out of hand has become critical after some Fulanis attacked soldiers this month. Cattle belonging to these Fulanis are now targets for security officers who are bent on killing them, with locals also targeting the nomads in reprisal attacks.
A member of parliament representing some of the affected areas in the Ashanti region, Andy Appiah Kubi has said that the Fulanis have bitten more than they can chew by attacking locals and security officials.
“The battle line has already been drawn, and now that the rules of the game have been set, definitely when you start shooting a military man you should know the consequences. You don’t think you can shoot a military man and go scot-free, so they have bitten more than they can chew and the military is on their task to just clear everybody from the land,” the lawmaker said.
But Fulanis in Ghana are worried about what they call the adhoc manner the government is dealing with the crisis.
Alhaji Osman Bin Ahmed who is a leading member of the Fulani community in Ghana said “We have Fulanis who have their own cattle there, secondly there Ghanaians who have cattle there, thirdly there are nomadic who come from somewhere to come and just disturb the peace. So if you don’t handle it carefully, we will even be disturbing innocent people. At the end of the day the cattle are wealth of the country. People will get the meat to eat, if we kill them now are we doing the right thing? Is killing the animal the solution? We shouldn’t run into anything.”
The major problem has been access to land for the grazing of cattle belonging to the Fulanis in order to prevent destruction of farm lands and protecting property.
Dr. Gyeile Nurah who is a minister of state at the Ministry of food and Agriculture in Ghana shared the ultimate plan of government to tackle the issue saying “What we are trying to do is to identify lands in Ghana to reserve them for animal grazing, unless we reserve lands for animal grazing, then we will say let’s stop cattle or animal rearing? and do only crop, and that too is not possible. We have identified some lands where government is going to fence, develop the pastures, build houses even for the Fulani men to stay.”
This plan is yet to become reality, until then it appears the crisis will continue for a while.
Source: Africafeeds.com / Isaac Kaledzi
