Fighting Over Grazing Land Is Spreading to Nigeria’s South

(Bloomberg) -- Fighting between farmers and cattle herders in Nigeria is spreading from the center to the south and fueled by a proliferation of weapons, according to a United Nations envoy.

“Nigeria needs urgent action to end the pressure cooker of violence, which is claiming thousands of lives,” Agnes Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions, told reporters Monday in the capital, Abuja. “Poverty and climate change are adding to these issues.”

The government of Africa’s most populous nation has been struggling to halt tit-for-tat attacks between farming and herding communities in the so-called Middle Belt. The conflict led to an estimated 2,000 deaths last year, more than the number of people killed by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

As the Sahara desert advances southward, herders who traditionally grazed their cattle on plains in the semi-arid Sahel zone are moving into central and southern Nigeria to find grazing land, where they clash with farming communities. Most herders are Muslim and ethnic Fulanis, while farmers are predominantly Christian, which adds an ethnic and religious dimension to the conflict.

Other countries in the Sahel are experiencing the same phenomenon. Burkina Faso and Mali each recently recorded some of the worst massacres in decades. Callamard, who concluded a visit to Nigeria and will issue a report later, also blamed “toxic narratives” for the violence.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dulue Mbachu in Abuja at dmbachu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Pauline Bax, Hilton Shone

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