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At the intersection of seven miles from the presidential villa, the frustrated driver honks as a herd of cattle graze on the grass beautifying the central strip and slowly marches across the road, hooves clattering against the asphalt. For the teenage herdsman who led them, Ismail Abubakar, it was just another day, and for most drivers stuck in traffic, it was a familiar scene unfolding in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
The presence of Abubakar and the cows in the center of the city is not out of choice but out of necessity. His family hails from Katsina State in northern Nigeria, where the climate has changed to a barren desert. He moved to Idu – a rural, bushy and underdeveloped part of Abuja – years ago. But now it is a residential complex, a vast railway complex and various industries.
“Our settlement in Idu was destroyed and the bush used to graze our cattle was cut to make way for a new house,” Abubakar said in Pidgin English. This forced his family to live on a hill on the outskirts of the city and walk the main roads for pasture.
Fulani herdsmen like Abubakar are mostly nomadic and dominate West Africa’s cattle industry. They used to rely on the wild countryside to graze cattle with free pastures, but the pressure of modernization, the need for land for housing and agriculture and human-caused climate change are challenging their way of life. In order to keep cattle off the streets and main farms of Abuja, some have suggested that herdsmen should start acquiring private land and operate like any other business. But to do this, they need money and government incentives.
“It is disappointing,” said Baba Ngelzarma, president of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, an advocacy group for Fulani pastoralists. “Nigeria is shown as a disorganized people. The herdsmen take their cows wherever they can find grass and water, at least for the cows to live, not caring if it is a city or a people’s land.”
He added that part of the problem is the government’s failure to harness the potential of the livestock industry by providing incentives such as infrastructure like water sources and veterinary services in designated grazing reserves and subsidizing them.
For its part, the government has said it will address the issue, before promising to reserve fences for cattle herders. President Bola Tinubu announced in July a new livestock development ministry, which Ngelzarma said would help save the abandoned grazing reserves. No minister was appointed.
Less places to go
Nigeria is home to more than 20 million cattle, mostly owned by Fulani herdsmen. The fourth largest cattle population in Africa, and a milk market worth $1.5 billion. But despite its size, nearly 90% of local demand is met through imports, according to the US International Trade Administration. This is a sign of the industry’s inefficiency, Ngelzarma said, because cows stressed from constant movement and poor diet are unable to produce milk.
For Abuja, the urban environment has consequences, and so do businesses when traffic comes to a standstill as cows cross busy streets. And in other parts of Nigeria, herders are often involved in violence with farmers over access to land, especially in central and southern Nigeria where the two industries overlap with religious and ethnic divisions.
There are four designated grazing reserves in rural areas around Abuja, but they lack the necessary infrastructure and have been encroached upon by farmers and other illegal settlers, according to Ngelzarma and Festus Adebayo, who is the executive secretary of the Housing Development Advocacy Network.
With the reserve unusable, herders set up settlements wherever they could and stayed as long as they could before the rightful owners claimed it or the government built it.
Mohammed Abbas, 67, has repeatedly had to relocate over the years. Most of the current settlements in the Life Camp neighborhood of the city have been taken over by the newly built gas station, and they know that the remaining land will be claimed by other owners.
As a small-scale pastoralist, he said he could not afford to buy land in Abuja for permanent settlement and farming. To get one, “I have to sell all my cows and that means nothing will be left on the ground,” he said in Hausa, sitting outside his hut.
Other pastoralists prefer to deny it.
“We’re not going anywhere anymore,” said Hassan Mohammed, whose family now lives in a lane next to a new house near the Idu railway station. Once a vast bush, the area has been swallowed up by infrastructure and housing projects. Mohammed now also drives a lorry on the side because of the dwindling resources needed to keep the cattle.
Despite repeated orders from the owner to vacate, Mohammed said the family will stay put, using the reduced lane as a base while taking their cattle elsewhere each day for grazing. The landowners have repeatedly urged the government to resettle Mohammed’s family, but the government has yet to act.
“Many are homeless, so they are just looking for a place to sleep at night with their cows,” Mohammed said, in Hausa. “But for us, we will not leave unless there is a new place in Abuja.”
Make room for development and cattle
Folawiyo Daniel, an Abuja-based real estate developer who has had trouble with pastoralists who are affecting the development of his project, said the issue is the failure of urban planning.
“Real estate development is not a problem,” he said, and the government should revive the grazing reserves in the city for pastoralists.
Adebayo, of the Housing Development Advocacy Network, agreed, saying “it is high time” Abuja minister Nyesom Wike acted and proved that “the problem of open grazing in the city of Abuja can be solved.”
Herdsmen must be moved to designated areas for their work or restricted to designated private properties, he said.
Officials in charge of animal husbandry at the agriculture ministry said they could not comment on major policy issues without authorization, while a spokesman for the ministry in charge in Abuja declined an interview request.
But in March, after the Belgian Ambassador to Nigeria raised concerns with Wike about cattle roaming on the streets of Abuja, he replied that there were efforts to stop the pointless grazing without revealing specific details.
Herdsmen say they are not opposed to restricted grazing methods or normal business-like practices that buy their own feedstock instead of using free pasture and water everywhere.
The problem, according to the chairman of the cattle association Ngelzarma, is that the government has neglected the sector and has not given incentives like other businesses, giving the example of irrigation systems for farmers and airports for private airline operators paid by the government.
“The government must revive the grazing reserves provided with infrastructure for water and feed production, training and veterinary services and generate employment and profits,” said Ngelzarma.
“Then, you can say stop roaming about free pastures,” he said.
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