The term sustainability has long been tied to the concept of development and other esoteric narrative. Sustainability is not particularly a trigger for crises and conflict but in some political circles and ethnically sensitive arenas it has been described as ethnic cleansing which is the case of farmers and herdsmen conflict in Nigeria. This discussion paper establishes the nexus between exceeding population growth across Africa, particularly Nigeria, the poor sustainability practices and the weak investment in agricultural value chain, which creates these conflicts that daily threaten national security in Nigeria.
About 68% of African population engage in agriculture. Agriculture here means direct cultivation of the earth – farming. About 66% of these farmers are only able to produce at subsistence level, using crude farm implements (simple farm tools), poor quality seeds, suffer poor access to markets (for the little they are able to push to the market) and ultimately lose an average of 27% of their produce targeted at the market. In Nigeria, specifically, approximately 70% of the about 193million Nigerians are involved in agriculture[1]. Significant percentage of these farmers are found in the Northern part of the country, which consists two thirdsof the country both in terms of land mass and human population. In the northern part of Nigeria, the average birth rate is 6.3 – 7 per woman and due to the high incidence of polygamy, the average number of children per household is 10.5. Correspondingly, the cumulative poverty rate in this part of the country is nearly 66%.
Because agriculture is the main stay of the Northern Nigeria economy, very much like many Sahelian countries in Africa, majority of the population are farmers and they often farm unsustainably. They engage in slash and burn techniques, often fail to conserve water, do not engage in minimum tillage and ultimately, cut down trees to increase cultivatable areas. Consequently, these practices encourage flooding and fast desert encroachment which significantly reduces the amount of arable land, even in the medium term. Due to this scarcity of fertile arable land, the survival of the households drives them further to deforestation which makes the situation worse.
On the leadership side, the extension service system is weak. Farmers are not taught on minimum tillage systems or any other sustainable farming practices to keep them from destroying the emerging forest areas to drive survival. A more strategic damage in this context is the lack of investment in agricultural value chain system. 90% of agricultural produce are consumed or sold without processing. This drives a hydra-headed challenge. First, it limits the food optionsfor the people due to lack of food sovereignty, which causes poor dieting and malnutrition. Secondly, it stagnates the economy because the value chain is supposed to create jobs which should naturally take some households out of the direct cultivation into value chain and agro-processing, which should create specialisation and knowledge transfer. By not investing in the value chain, the entire advantage to this sector is lost. This then negatively drives further deforestation.
Another independent agent in this narrative is the lack of participatory urban planning, or as it is in many states, zero urban planning. This is another complex issue. The law of eminent domain, an obvious character in the Nigerian 1999 Constitution as evident in the land use decree 1978 is a major culprit here. The State governorshave statutory right to give land on behalf of the state for overriding public interests. This instrument is often used as a political tool, not necessarily a developmental tool, which arguably, is the idea behind the concept. Often times when these decisions are made, the politicians override the existing land use, the natural contours, the current livelihoods of the people, the future expansion plans and other critical issues such as the cattle route, the traditional land holding systems, the social network parameters in land holding among several others. Ultimately, lands are allocated for political reasons without any recourse to the plans of other stakeholders along the area – the growing number of subsistence farmers (due to exceeding population growth without alternative livelihoods options) who are often usufruct title holders, traditional land owners who own traditional lands on behalf of their people and in some case the throne they represent, the herders who have age-long agreed access rights to grazing route and grazing reserves among several others, land speculators for urbanisation, project developers, and several other actors.
This unilateral decision of the state governors issuing land without due consultation and adequate strategic planning often lead to trampling on the interest of these other stakeholders. Of these stakeholders, farmer and herdsmen are the most concerned parties because their survival is dependent on access to land. Farming involve direct tillage of land, while and herding involving livestock grazing on the land. In most cases, they hold usufructuary rights which when interest clashes, they resort to confrontation and physical combat.
Because of poor planning or as it is in some cases, the lack of it, the route designed / agreed by stakeholders as cattle routes are continually being encroached upon by farmers and other actors, which obstructs the movement of cattle herders, affecting their livelihoods and indirectly their survival. This naturally triggers crises. Unfortunately, this situation, coupled with the proliferation of small arms across the Sahelian nation due to the uncontrolled exhaust from the Arab-Spring had helped create and sustain the Fulani Herdsmen and Famers Crises for the most part.
The entire chain of event in this discourserequiresurgent attention. It warrants a solution that is flexible enough to accommodate the needs of all relevant stakeholders, in an organic manner to manage the crisis etymologically. This would require significant capacity building, essentially on the need for family planning to address the issue of population control. More so, there is an urgent need for land use management and planning and equally important, investment in agricultural value chain and significant investment in afforestation to control desertification and further protect green areas.
Bankole Allibay
Dr. Allibay is the Global Social Performance Lead, Translantic Development Limited
