Video - Digital soil mapping technique helps Nigeria’s farmers

Many small scale farmers in West Africa and the Sahel region have been struggling with low yields for years due to the poor soil quality on their farms or growing crops in unsuitable areas. However in Nigeria, farmers are now benefiting from digital soil mapping that's helping them maximize harvests and identify best areas to grow different crops.

CGTN

Video - Nigeria deploys 10,000 armed rangers to protect farmers from insurgents

The farrmers say they can no longer tend to crops and livestock out of fear of being attacked. The violence drove away farmers, leaving fields barren and causing ripple effects throughout the country, including driving up food inflation.

CGTN

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Video - Experts in Nigeria call for more support to snake farmers to counter anti-venom shortages

Snake farming is not widespread, despite a high demand for venom due to frequent snake bite incidents and related deaths.

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Video - Nigerian farmers working to prevent the extinction of Indigenous varieties

In local vegetable markets across the country, many traditional vegetables are gradually disappearing. However, one farmer, Emmanuel Thomas is on a mission to collect and cultivate rare species of traditional Nigerian and African vegetables.

CGTN

Video - Nigerian farming community loses crop due to toxic emissions from oil refinery

Environmental regulators linked the issues to a hydrogen chloride leak at a refinery in Kaduna State. They added it could take between 5 to 10 years to reverse the effects of the acid released into the soil.

CGTN

At least 10 farmers killed by gunmen in northern Nigeria

Gunmen in Nigeria killed at least 10 farmers on Wednesday in an attack on a village in the northern Niger state, residents said.

Armed gangs, known locally as bandits, have frequently raided communities in northwest Nigeria, kidnapping residents, farmers, students and motorists for ransom.

Residents told Reuters on Thursday that the gunmen had attacked some farmers in Allawa community of Shiroro local government area in Niger late the previous day.

"The farmers were trapped and 10 killed yesterday evening in their respective farms," said Hassan Abubakar.

Another resident, Indamishe Auwal, who helped remove the corpses, lamented the incident and the general insecurity in the area.

"Shiroro is bleeding. Our people are suffering and bandits have taken over our farmlands," Auwal said.

Niger state police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

By Ahmed Kingimi, Reuters

Related story: Nigeria deploys armed rangers to protect farmers

 

Nigeria deploys armed rangers to protect farmers

As attacks on farmers intensified across Nigeria, Fatima Bello from Sokoto abandoned dry season farming.

The smallholder farmer of rice, millet and beans shared her experience of farming under constant threat.

'During the dry season last year, I did not even plant anything because of this issue of insecurity,' she said. 'What I would have produced that I would have used for my family and also take to the market, other people are going to benefit from what I will sell. They will buy, but now it means if I don't produce anything, then it means I will not have been able to have something to use.'

Violent attacks, land levies and kidnappings have forced many farmers to abandon their lands, driving up food inflation. In response, the government declared a state of emergency on food security in 2023 and recently deployed 10,000 agro rangers across 19 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Their mission is to safeguard farmland and mediate conflicts, especially in areas hit by farmer-herder clashes.

Bello sees this as a positive step.

'I think it is welcomed development,' she said. 'It has just been started, so we need to see, maybe take some time. Then we will be able to know the impact.'

Affirming the rangers' readiness to restore safety across the food belt, Babawale Afolabi, a spokesperson for the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, says all hands are on deck.

'Our operatives have been on top of the game since the commissioning of the agro rangers squad nationwide. ... The agro ranger is a well-seasoned, trained and formidable special force, and we thank the federal government for providing necessary logistics so far,' he said.

'We have increased and upskilled our intelligent base so we can tackle head-on rising challenges,' he said. 'We are all for engaging the communities to create awareness on how to give credible information.'

Plateau, Zamfara, Niger and other states considered hot zones for farmer insecurity are supporting the squad with logistics.

While praising the government's intervention, farmer and agricultural economist Retson Tedheke stresses the need for more personnel.

'It's a very good thing,' he said, 'but 10,000 is a very small number. If you ask me, there are over 150,000 polling units. Multiply that by five, that should be the agro rangers we have. And not just in the agro ranger level - if you are sending five agro rangers in a particular location, send five extension workers.'

Tedheke warns that addressing the root causes of insecurity in farming communities requires sustained effort.

'Nigerian farmers should be getting loans at between 5% and 7%,' he said, 'because we are producing food. ... Food security is a major component of political development, governmental development and leadership development."

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that 22 million Nigerians could face food insecurity in 2024, with projections rising to 82 million by 2030.

VOA 

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Video - Farmers in Nigeria grapple with soaring transport costs

Transportation expenses in Nigeria have surged by over 200 percent in the past year, severely impacting the agricultural sector and escalating food prices, according to farmers and analysts.

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Video - Thousands of farmers in Nigeria still displaced three months after Bokkos village attacks

Many villages in north-central Nigeria remain deserted nearly three months after a series of coordinated attacks. Gunmen targeted over 20 villages in the Bokkos local government area of Plateau State over several days in December 2023. Thousands of people remain displaced.

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Scores Killed In Massacre Of Farmers In Nigeria

Nigeria considering state policing to combat growing insecurity

 

 

Video - Bandits force farming communities in Nigeria to pay hefty levies

According to a report by SBM, an Africa-focused geopolitical research firm, farmers in northwestern states like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara and Jigawa, where banditry is widespread, often pay bandits twice just to be allowed to use their land during the planting and harvesting seasons. The situation has adversely affected Nigeria's food security.

CGTN

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Dozens killed in ‘barbaric, senseless’ violence in Nigeria

Video - Bandit extortion fuels food insecurity in northern Nigeria

A report by an Africa-focused geopolitical firm highlights cases in banditry-ravaged states like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, and Jigawa. Farmers say the bandits' actions have forced many to abandon their farms, which leads to decreased food production.

CGTN

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Video - Nigerian palm farmers eye lucrative opportunities in domestic market

While Nigeria consumes nearly three million metric tonnes of palm oil annually, domestic output is only around 1.3 million metric tonnes, with a considerable portion being imported. Recognizing the immense potential, Nigerian palm farmers believe that with proper support, the sector could significantly contribute to the country's earnings.

CGTN

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Video - More security personnel deployed to Plateau state in Nigeria after December attacks

The additional deployment follows attacks by gunmen who invaded communities in Plateau state on Christmas Eve, killing over 150 people. Analysts believe the government needs to employ more than just a heavy hand to bring peace to the area.

CGTN

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Villagers missing in Nigeria two days after suspected nomadic herders kill 140

 

 

Video - Nigeria mourns the brutal murders of at least 160 people

Communities in Plateau state, Nigeria are in mourning after at least 160 people were killed in a series of attacks by armed groups over the Christmas weekend. The gunmen targeted about 20 villages across the Bokkos and Barkin Ladi areas.

CGTN

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Video - Insecurity in Nigeria's northern regions hampering food production

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, as many as 26 million Nigerians could face severe hunger by next year. The UN agency says several issues, but mainly insecurity, contribute to the problem. Experts have called on the government to address these concerns to safeguard food production.

CGTN

8 Killed, 10 Abducted by Islamic Extremists in Nigeria

Islamic extremists killed eight farmers and abducted 10 in an attack in northeastern Nigeria, officials said Friday — the latest in a volatile region that is a key part of the country's breadbasket and where militants have threatened food supplies.

The farmers were ambushed in the bush in the Borno state's Mafa district Thursday. The attackers slit their throats, authorities said.

Babagana Zulum, the state governor, said the attack was an attempt to "sabotage the successes of the government" as it struggles to have those displaced in Borno return to their villages and rebuild their lives.

He said the security forces need to rise to the challenge but also urged residents to take individual precautions.

"We must rise to our responsibility and address the situation," Zulum said. "I've told the people to be resilient, and they should be security-conscious and avoid remote locations."

Islamic extremist rebels launched an insurgency in Borno in 2009 to establish their radical interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the region. At least 35,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced because of the violence by the militant Boko Haram group and a breakaway faction backed by the Islamic State group.

Borno's farming communities have been frequently targeted in recent months, raising fears of extreme hunger as U.N. agencies continue to warn of famine.

On Friday, local villagers are mourning the slain farmers while also decrying inadequate security measures in remote and volatile areas.

Modu Ibrahim, a resident, said there were no security forces where the farmers' bodies were found. The extremists spared one teenager whom they asked to "deliver the message" about the attack to other villagers, Ibrahim said.

The Islamic insurgency in the northeast has also overstretched Nigeria's security forces as they continue to battle other crises across the country, including continuing clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farming communities in northwest and central regions of the West African nation.

AP

16 dead in herders and farmers clash in Nigeria

Sixteen people have been killed in two attacks in north-central Nigeria in a region struggling with inter-communal violence, the army said.

Clashes between nomadic herders and farming communities often flare in Plateau State, which sits on the dividing line between the mostly Muslim north and Nigeria’s predominantly Christian south.

In the latest violence on Tuesday, half a dozen members of a local farmers’ self-defense group were killed by gunmen in Riyom district while another 10 people were killed in an attack in Mangu area, an army spokesman said.

“Six lives were lost in Riyom,” said army Major Ishaku Takwa told AFP on Wednesday.

“Another attack took place in some communities in Mangu and 10 persons died.”

Plateau state assembly member representing Mangu South, Bala Fwangje, said 14 people had been killed in that area.

“We heard that about 14 people were killed, houses destroyed, property burnt. I am yet to get the full details,” he said.

Since May, nearly 200 people have been killed in clashes between the Berom farming communities, who are mainly Christian, and the cattle breeding communities of Fulani Muslims in the Riyom, Barkin Ladi, and Mangu areas of Plateau.

It was unclear what exactly triggered the recent attacks in Plateau, but tit-for-tat killings between herders and farmers often spiral into village raids by heavily armed gangs who kidnap, loot and kill villagers.

The Plateau crisis is one of the many security challenges facing President Bola Tinubu who took the helm of Africa’s most populous nation at the end of May. 

AFP

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Bomb blast kills at least 50 in Nigeria

Dozens of cattle herders and bystanders were killed and several injured by a suspected bomb blast in Nigeria's north central region, a state government official and spokesperson of the national cattle breeders said on Wednesday.

The incident happened on Tuesday night between Nasarawa and Benue states in north central Nigeria.

The spokesperson of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, Tasi'u Suleman, said a group of Fulani herders were moving their cattle to Nasarawa from Benue, where authorities had confiscated the animals for breaching anti-grazing laws, when an explosion rocked the area.

"At least about 54 people died instantly. Those who were injured were countless," Suleman said.

Nasarawa governor Abdullahi Sule did not say how many people were killed, but told reporters that a bomb blast was responsible for the deaths.

He did not say who was believed to be behind the explosion, but said he had been meeting with security agencies "to ensure that we continue to douse the tension" that could be caused by the incident.

North central Nigeria, also known as the Middle Belt, is prone to violence due to clashes between Fulani pastoralists and farmers, who are mainly Christian, which is often painted as ethno-religious conflict.

But experts say population growth and climate change has led to an expansion of the area dedicated to farming, leaving less land available for open grazing by nomads' herds of cattle.

The governor's spokesperson Abubakar Ladan told Reuters that mass burial for those killed were held earlier on Wednesday.

By Ardo Hazzad and Ahmed Kingimi, Reuters

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Video - Conflict between herdsmen and farmers remains deadly in Nigeria

At least 23 killed in Nigeria after herdsmen attack villagers

Clashes between herdsmen and farmers in the Nigerian state of Benue left at least 23 people dead, a local official said on Thursday, the latest deadly incident fuelled by growing pressure on land resources in Africa's most populous country.

Violence between farmers and pastoralists has become increasingly common in recent years as population growth leads to an expansion of the area dedicated to farming, leaving less land available for open grazing by nomads' herds of cattle.

Kertyo Tyounbur, chairman of the Ukum local government area of Benue where the violence took place, gave a death toll of 23.

Local resident William Samson said the trouble started on Tuesday when villagers killed two herders and stole their cattle. This was followed by a reprisal attack by herdsmen on Wednesday on the village of Gbeji, he said.

Reuters could not verify his account from other sources in the remote rural area.

Benue is one of Nigeria's Middle Belt states, where the majority Muslim North meets the predominantly Christian South.

Competition over land use is particularly intractable in the Middle Belt as the fault lines between farmers and herders often overlap with ethnic and religious divisions.

The Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast has worsened the problem by driving herders into the Middle Belt and further south, analysts say, while climate change and increasing aridity in the North are also contributing factors.

By Chijioke Ohuocha

Reuters

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Mass burial in Nigeria for 73 killed in violence between herdsmen and farmers

Pastoralist attack survivors unsettled in Nigeria

Pastoralist attack survivors unsettled in Nigeria

One sunny afternoon in April, Rahmata Adeagbo, was seated on a bed in her brother’s house where she now lives, staring blankly at the visitors.

“Ade-lo-wo … Ade-a-gbo,” the 50-year-old muttered after a long silence, painfully stringing the syllables of her late husband’s name.

On June 5, 2021, he had stepped out after receiving calls that nomadic herdsmen had laid siege to their town, Igangan, some 176km (109 miles) away from Lagos. The next time she saw him, his body was ridden with bullets, one of 11 deaths during the attack.

Before that episode, Igangan and six neighbouring towns – all in Oyo state – had experienced a number of clashes stemming from disagreements between Indigenous Yoruba farmers and nomadic Fulani herdsmen.

At the root of the crisis is cattle grazing on farmlands across Nigeria but the battle for resources has been exacerbated by climate change across the Sahel, worsening economic conditions and in some cases, ethnicity and religion; the nomads are mostly Muslim and the farmers are predominantly Christians.

Entire villages have been displaced and schools closed for successive sessions. Interstate food supply chains are disrupted as cattle markets have been razed and farmers have been unable to tend to their crops or have seen them destroyed.

In central Nigeria, the hotspot, as many as 13 million people are at risk of hunger, the World Food Programme said earlier this year.

Between 2016 and 2018, there were 3,641 deaths nationwide due to the conflict, according to Amnesty International. The majority of the reported victims were Indigenes and herdsmen were reported as the aggressors, launching deadly raids frequently.

But even in the southwest, where interfaith households are common and religious tolerance is deemed the highest nationwide, these clashes have become rife. In recent years, it has morphed into more dangerous dimensions involving kidnappings, rape, highway robberies, and coordinated destruction of farmlands.

In 2019, an anti-open grazing law addressing what many experts have identified as the root cause of the disagreements – resource sharing – was passed into law in Oyo. But it has not yet been implemented.

Two years later, as attacks in Igangan continued without perpetrators being apprehended, non-state actors led by a Yoruba ethnic rights activist, Sunday Adeyemo Igboho, demolished property belonging to Fulani residents.

Residents told Al Jazeera that this eviction and the controversies that followed likely spurred the June 5 attack.
 

Growing distrust

According to a report [PDF] by the International Crisis Group, factors that have allowed Nigeria’s pastoralist crisis to fester range from impunity and eroding confidence in the country’s security forces to the government’s poor response to early warnings.

For years, the national security architecture has been overstretched by armed groups running riot in northeast, northwest and central Nigeria.

In January 2020, as cases of insecurity spiked in southwest Nigeria, the six state governors in the region agreed to create a regional security network. It was codenamed Amotekun (Yoruba for leopard). The federal government kicked against the move citing constitutional concerns so the governors redesigned it into a state-based security vigilante to support the police, which is controlled by Abuja.

In Oyo State, the outfit launched in November 2020.

Even though the June 2021 attack remains the last full-scale one coordinated by herdsmen on residents of any of the seven neighbouring towns, residents told Al Jazeera that neither the recent reduction in attacks nor the government’s efforts had eased their fears.

Matthew Page, an associate fellow at the UK-based think-tank Chatham House, says their decision not to trust the authorities’ promise of safety is justified, explaining that “security agencies are ineffective because authorities have tolerated endemic corruption and turned a blind eye to their operational failures”.

Idayat Hassan, director of Abuja-based CDD, agreed, saying it is difficult for residents to trust the state because it has lost the monopoly of violence.

“The inability of the state to respond even when furnished with information ahead of attacks also makes citizens believe they are either complicit or abetting,” she said. “This further eroded the thin trust existing between citizens and governments.”

Peace and unease

Before her husband’s death, Adeagbo was a housewife who occasionally engaged in farmwork but her mental health has begun to suffer since and she can no longer work.

“When her husband died, she suffered a serious emotional issue,” her brother, Akeem Rasheed, told Al Jazeera. “Her husband’s death and the unavailability of resources to cater for her kids pushed her to the brink.”

Initially, he took her to the closest neuropsychiatric hospital, 77km [48 miles] from the town, for treatment. After two months, he had to take her back home because he could no longer afford her hospital bills.

“They allowed me to take her away only because I promised to keep bringing her for regular check-ups, something I have not done because I don’t have money again,” Rasheed said.

As her mental state declines, her family is clinging to the hope that she will get better and that the town will not be attacked again.

But despite no attacks in recent months, residents of other communities in the region are choosing pragmatism over hope.

Across villages in Ogun state, next door to Lagos, residents are relocating to the neighbouring Benin Republic. One of them is Clement Oyebanjo, a teacher in Agbon village who moved there briefly last February after an attack in his village killed four people.

“We are not at ease and sleep with our eyes half open because we know as long as open-grazing is not banned, these Fulani herders will come back,” says Oyebanjo who is prepared to return to Benin if another attack happens.
 

‘Violence entrepreneurs’

After Igangan was attacked in June, its residents created a new vigilante group. One of its members was Emmanuel Oguntoyinbo whose younger brother was shot dead on his motorcycle by the attackers while returning from a party.

“We, the youths of the town, that decided that we needed to do that because initially, the community employed some vigilantes from outside, but when the government refused to pay, they left,” the 35-year-old told Al Jazeera.

Every night, armed with Dane guns and charms, they take positions across the town while others patrol strategic places in groups. The community’s youth leader, Olayiwola Olusegun, told Al Jazeera that every household contributes money every month to provide ammunition.

In Agbon, the local vigilante group continues to recruit new members. In neighbouring Ibeku, residents are now wary of visitors and report unknown faces immediately to the town’s traditional ruler.

In Ondo State, dozens of elder residents of communities like Okeluse and Molege, have fled too, while youths who stayed behind have picked up arms to protect themselves.

Meanwhile, Wasiu Olatunbosun, Oyo State commissioner for information, told Al Jazeera the government had put in place the machinery to secure towns like Igangan. He insisted that residents who claim to stay up at night because of their fear of another attack must be opposition members.

For experts like Page, the outcome of these dynamics could be an “expansion of violence entrepreneurs” and more instability even if residents embracing self-defence is justified.

The only difference, he said, between “a vigilante, political thug, insurgent, or bandit is for whom or what cause he fights”.

By Adebayo Abdulrahman

Al Jazeera

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Video - Conflict between herdsmen and farmers remains deadly in Nigeria