Ibaji is once again a place of fear. Farmers abandon their fields, families sleep lightly and ordinary life is suspended by the sound of gunfire and rumours of attack. As always, the conflict between Fulani herdsmen and host communities is explained away in ethnic terms, as though violence were encoded in identity rather than produced by failure. Yet a comparison with how cattle herding functions in the United States exposes a far more uncomfortable truth: what is unfolding in Ibaji is not cultural destiny, but administrative collapse.
Cattle herding exists in America on a scale that rivals anywhere in the world. Ranchers move livestock across vast territories, protect their investments and coexist with farming communities without turning rural life into a theatre of war. Disputes are settled by courts, not bullets. Ranch workers do not roam armed through private land, and forests are not sanctuaries for criminals disguised as pastoral labour. The difference is not moral superiority, but structure. Where law is firm, violence is marginal. Where the state retreats, conflict becomes routine.
Nigeria has refused to accept a basic economic fact: cows are not heritage artefacts, they are capital. They represent significant financial value and must be managed as such. In functional systems, capital comes with responsibility. In Nigeria, cow ownership has been severed from accountability. Wealthy owners dispatch large herds across fragile communities while remaining insulated from the consequences of destruction, death and displacement. The human beings who move these animals are left untrained, unsupervised and socially unprepared for the environments they enter. This negligence is not neutral. It is combustible.
Nomadic herding without education is not tradition; it is a security risk. Many herders lack basic literacy, an understanding of land rights or the skills required to manage disputes in densely populated farming areas. When crops are damaged or boundaries crossed, there is no shared language of negotiation. Friction hardens into confrontation, and confrontation into violence. The situation is further corroded by the reported use of hard drugs within forest corridors, a toxic mix that erodes judgement and inflames aggression. Once drugs and weapons enter the pastoral economy, dialogue becomes impossible.
In countries where herding is regulated, such conditions would trigger immediate intervention. Nigeria, by contrast, has allowed its forests to become lawless spaces, beyond surveillance and beyond consequence. Criminal elements exploit this vacuum, hiding behind cattle routes and ethnic camouflage. Law abiding Fulani herders are trapped in the same chaos, increasingly viewed with suspicion and hostility, while local government and communities like Ibaji bear the brunt of repeated attacks.
Education offers one of the most practical exits from this spiral. Not formal schooling in distant classrooms, but targeted, functional learning adapted to nomadic life. Basic civic knowledge, conflict management and communication skills can be delivered through simple, customised mobile devices using audio and visual tools in local languages. This is not an indulgence; it is a preventive investment. It costs far less than military deployments and mass burials.
Equally urgent is enforcement. Forest Security Guards, properly trained and empowered, must be deployed to police grazing routes, disarm offenders and arrest those operating under the influence of drugs or violence. No modern state allows armed economic activity to function outside its authority. Nigeria should be no exception.
Above all, crime must be stripped of its ethnic shield. When criminal acts are excused or defended in the name of identity, justice collapses and resentment multiplies. In functioning societies, offenders are prosecuted as individuals, not defended as representatives. Nigeria’s failure to draw this line has poisoned relations between communities and deepened cycles of reprisal.
The Ibaji is not asking for vengeance. It is asking for order. Its farmers are demanding what farmers everywhere demand: protection of their land, respect for their lives and the presence of a state that works. The lesson from the American experience is neither abstract nor distant. When cattle are treated as business, herders as professionals and land as legally protected, coexistence becomes normal rather than miraculous.
Nigeria stands at a crossroads. It can continue to romanticise disorder and mourn its victims, or it can modernise a pastoral system that has outlived its unmanaged form. Until cows are governed by law, forests by authority and people by responsibility, communities like Ibaji or the fulanis will remain exposed. Peace, in this context, is not a prayer. It is a policy choice.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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