ARTICLE LANDING PAGE 43
Anti-Open Grazing Policy and the Menace of Fulani Herdsmen in Nigeria A case of Benue State(2015-2019)
Abstract
The relationship of herdsmen with their host communities/farmers has gradually degenerated over the years to one of mutual suspicion, conflict over resources, orgies of violence and killings. The attacks by the herdsmen on the sedentary communities have continued unabated especially in Benue State. They constitute a grave national security threat which requires a national emergency. It was against this backdrop that the Benue State Government promulgated the open gazing prohibition and ranches establishment law in November 2017 to guard against the menace. Therefore, this paper did a holistic evaluation of the impact of the law in tackling the farmers/herders imbroglios and findings showed that, the law unfortunately aggravated the crises in the state due to poor timing and implementation mechanism. The study adopted the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis in explaining the subject matter and utilised both primary and secondary data. Ultimately, the study recommended that, the federal government should declare herdsmen menace as a national emergency which needs full scale response of her action, amending the discriminatory sections of the Benue anti-open grazing law, massive and compulsory basic education for herdsmen in order to reduce their aggressive tendencies which are akin to base animal behaviour for peaceful co-existence with the agrarian communities.
