As herders seek greener pastures for their cattle due to changing climatic conditions, crops and farmlands are destroyed, leading to clashes between herders and farmers. NCHETACHI CHUKWUAJAH tells the story of female farmers who have suffered physical and sexual abuse from herders amidst the crises that have engulfed their communities and displaced them.
Catherine (surname withheld) ran into five suspected herders in soldiers’ uniform one evening in January 2022. She was coming back from her farm in Tsevuer community, Guma Local Government Area (LGA) of Benue State. After beating her to obtain information on the whereabouts of members of her community, all five men took turns to rape her.
“They beat me up. One of them pulled me down by my hand, tore my clothes, and all of them raped me one by one,” the 30-year-old mother of five said in her local Tiv language, her voice trembling and face downcast.
Thirty-five-year old Justina (surname withheld) saw her brother and his wife butchered by six suspected herders on their farm in Tsevembe village, Guma Local Government Area (LGA) in early May this year. She said the herders raped her afterwards.
The widow, who had lost her only child in an earlier attack in 2021, said she fainted and could not stand or walk for days.
Recounting her ordeal to Nigerian Tribune in a tear-laden voice, Justina said she was too frightened to run like the other farmers.
“They came to where I was, and five out of the six of them raped me. Only one of them didn’t join them because he said the raping was becoming too much,” Justina said.
For Grace (surname withheld), a 43-year-old mother of five young children, rape is an ignoble act abhorred in her tradition. And so she felt dishonoured after the incident that took place in her village called Tseubebe in Makurdi LGA, in 2020.
“They were three. One of them said they should sleep with me and enjoy themselves. But I thought they were joking because I am older than them and such a thing is an abomination in my tradition. I was powerless against them, but one of them eventually raped me.”
Though Catherine, Justina, and Grace find shelter in clusters of make-shift tents, in deplorable conditions at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp at Ichwa, along UniAgric Road, North Bank, Makurdi, they go about their daily lives finding no respite for the trauma, shock and discomfort that have become their life experience.
“Till today, if I want to urinate, it feels like my private part is coming out. Anytime I hear stories of an attack or a loud noise, my heart skips. I also avoid crowded places because such places trigger my anxiety. I always have flashbacks of that incident,” Justina said.
“What they have done is more like making me a living-dead. I don’t understand what is happening with my body anymore. I feel movements and noises in my stomach sometimes. I don’t know if it will result in my death. What kind of life am I living?” Grace queried.
‘Things have not always been like this’
Prior to the attacks, farmers in Benue State went about their farming business witnessing an intermittent migration of herders in search of pasture. This had continued until February 2013 when the first attack by herders was recorded in Agatu LGA. Between 2015 and March 2023, 5,138 deaths were recorded and 18 of the states 23 LGAs attacked by suspected herdsmen.
Between 2015 and March 2023, 5,138 deaths were recorded and 18 of the 23 councils in the state were attacked by suspected herdsmen.
These attacks are belied by inaccessibility of land due to the desertification and variability in the amount of rainfall witnessed in parts of the Sahel in response to the impact of climate change.
This situation pushed herders to search for pasture for their cattle in the Savannah and Guinea Savannah areas of Nigeria that are more adaptable where Benue and other middle belt states are located.
During these movements, crops and farmlands are destroyed, and as Professor Precious Ede, a professor of climatology, Department of Geography, Rivers State University of Technology, noted, “Naturally, herders of these cattle have to find a way.
“Annually they already move south during the dry season but the absence of rain, even for a couple of weeks, is sufficient to make them move earlier than expected and to begin to distrust their reliance on rain in the dry area where they emanate from.”
Female farmers in the eye of the storm
As with all climate change-related issues, academics in the Department of Geography, Benue State University, Makurdi, say that the farmers-herders’ crisis disproportionately affects women and other vulnerable groups.
In a March 2023 research paper, the researchers found that Climate change and conflict significantly increased smallholder farmersvulnerability, resulting in loss of livelihoods, financial assets, agricultural yield, and worsening debt problems. However, women are more disadvantaged.
The research added that within the family unit, “the magnitude of the impact of climate change on women and girls will be significantly higher and worse in view of the prevailing gender inequalities in the world today,” while noting that these inequalities in economic advantage and wage discrimination “make women more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as they lack adequate resources that would help reduce their vulnerability.”
These assertions are no truer than what is now the lives of Catherine, Justina, Grace and many other female farmers who account for 70-80 percent of farmers in Nigeria, suffering a crisis that has deprived them of their dignity, source of income and livelihood.
They desire to leave the IDP camps and return to the lives they know – farming – and escape from the trauma of abuse and displacement.
Prior to the attack on her community, Justina farmed yam, cassava, rice, and other crops on seven to eight hectares of land before the death of her only child. She could but only farm two hectares with the help of others. Now at the IDP camp, having to beg for food or scavenge for grains from winnowed rice chaff in rice mills breaks her heart.
“I practically live like a dog now unlike when I was at home. Then, I farm and eat very well. I can’t even invite anyone to share in the food I eat here,” she said.
The impact of the crisis is not lost on Catherine who had yam, beniseed, cassava and rice on more than 100 lines of farm. “Feeding has become a problem because of this crisis. Back in my village, even if you don’t have food, those who have will cook, and you will eat enough. But here, anyone who finds food will first share it with their family.”
Anti-open grazing law to the rescue?
Unlike other countries, Professor Ede said the unavailability of strong laws to check the movement of cattle in Nigeria further fuels farmers-herders crisis.
To this end, the Benue State government, on May 22, 2017 signed the Benue State Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, prohibiting the movement of livestock on foot. So far, other states have adopted the law under different names.
The law was amended in January 2022 by the state’s House of Assembly to include stiffer penalties. In the amended law, first offenders will be fined N500,000; N1 million for subsequent offenders and N500,000 or a year imprisonment for a livestock owner or manager of a ranch.
Also, owners of impounded animals will pay N50,000, N10,000, N5,000, and N1,000 fines, respectively, per cow, pig, sheep/goat, and bird. An additional daily fine of N20,000, N1,000, N500, and N100 per cow, pig, sheep/goat, or bird is incurred if the livestock are unclaimed within 24 hours and auctioned off after seven days of not being claimed.
After six years, the unabating crises and killings in the state cast doubts on the law’s implementation.
Akor Yar, Secretary of Baka IDPs’ camp, Makurdi, has been displaced since herdsmen attacked his Mbalagh community in Makurdi LGA in 2017. He came to the camp after another “very bloody” attack in his maternal home in Yeluwatta in 2021.
Yar said the Livestock Guards, who implement the law, impound straying livestock and leave the communities vulnerable to reprisals. “We will have no choice but to run away. Are we going to use machetes to fight people that are armed with guns?” he queried.
Corroborating Yar’s point, Mr Joseph Ngbede, chairman of Agatu LGA, said there were not enough security personnel to protect communities against armed herders.
Professor Ede attributed the law’s paradox to the structure of the Nigerian federation, where power is concentrated at the centre and the issue of precedent if a state succeeds in implementing such laws.
While the question of the implementation of the anti-open grazing law remains, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) continues to say its members’ inputs were not captured in the law.
A former secretary of the association, Shettima Mohammed, told Nigerian Tribune that the association was not invited nor were its opinions sought during the formulation of the law.
Mohammed said the immediacy of the law’s implementation may have appeared like it skewed against herders, as it gave no time for sensitisation. He called for dialogue and a review of the law.
“The law came, but the crisis has not stopped. Both the Fulanis and farmers have been scattered from where they used to stay. We made a request that the law be reviewed so that it can have a human face but there was no room for that,” Mohammed said.
However, the Special Adviser on Security Matters to former Governor Samuel Ortom, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Hemba (retd), said such allegations are aimed at discrediting the efforts of the state government.
Hemba said, “All Fulani groups that are represented in the state were all involved; they made input into it sufficiently at every level of the enactment of the law.”
‘We can’t apprehend rape perpetrators; they vanish into thin air’
As Catherine, Justina, Grace and other victims of herders’ sexual abuse live with the trauma of their experience, their abusers vanish into thin air contrary to the provisions of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act 2015.
The Act prescribes life imprisonment or a minimum of 12 years imprisonment without the option of fine as punishment for rape. It also takes cognisance of group rape and prescribes a joint minimum of 20 years imprisonment for perpetrators.
Despite the adoption of the VAPP Act in Benue since 2019, Lieutenant-Colonel Hemba said only a few cases of herders’ abuse of female farmers have been successfully prosecuted “because of their hide and seek tactics.
“Most of these crimes are committed in very remote areas and before anybody could come over to apprehend and hand them (herders) over to the police, they disappear again. But any of those that were arrested for these crimes were prosecuted.”
On his part, Mr Ngbede said the perpetrators “once they perform the act, they vanish into thin air. We don’t know their base. They just attack and go.”
However, Mohammed said the blame for rape should be shared between the youths of the communities and herders as both sides “are doing that to each other,” but those apprehended are usually prosecuted.
“When Fulanis see the Tiv youths, they rape them; the same thing with the Tiv. The thing is happening on the Tiv side and the Fulani side,” he said.
Seeking justice and way forward
Though Catherine, Justina, Grace and others have received treatments and psychosocial help from personnel of Doctors Without Borders in the camp, they seek justice and an end to the crises.
This, Yar and Mohammed said can be achieved through dialogue and other equitable resolution methods.
Professor Ede advocated for the education of farmers, herders and adoption of modern cattle-rearing systems to improve their productivity.
“I hope the government will resolve this issue so that we can go back to our homes. We don’t know how the crisis came about, but we are the ones suffering and dying,” Justina tearily said.
This report is produced in fulfilment of UNESCO and CIJ London Climate Change in News Media project facilitated by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development.
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