Sometimes he seeks agreement on an eviction date for herdsmen.
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Behind them marched captured herdsmen, driving their cows and rams.
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And herdsmen and farmers have been feeling it the most.
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The herdsmen are mostly Muslim and the settled farmers are often Christian.
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In central Nigeria, houses have been built across routes used by herdsmen.
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Herdsmen described how bandits wielding AK-47s had taken their cows and sheep.
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Herdsmen were suddenly cut off from their pastures and farmers from their wells.
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Like the majority of herdsmen, Nigeria's president, Muhammadu Buhari, is ethnically Fulani Muslim.
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Entire communities, hundreds, have been sacked — destroyed and taken over by Fulani herdsmen.
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The clashes between Fulani herdsmen and Christian farmers are of a complex nature.
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Pictured above are the wooden huts of the oldest preserved herdsmen settlement in Europe.
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News reports often focus on killings by herdsmen without mentioning deadly attacks by farmers.
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Many farmers live on isolated properties and have been shot at by armed herdsmen.
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Many fences have been dismantled with bolt cutters, not equipment the average herdsmen carries.
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Herdsmen fleeing a severe drought have brought tens of thousands of animals onto private land.
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With no dedicated grazing grounds, herdsmen cut fences and drive their cattle through the crops.
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Those attacked believe the Fulani herdsmen want to forcibly take over their lands for cattle grazing.
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Fights between nomadic herdsmen and farmers in the middle of the country have left hundreds dead.
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But tensions between landowners and herdsmen, many of them Samburu, date from well before the current drought.
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Some states, such as Benue, have passed laws that ban herdsmen from grazing cattle on open land.
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Up to 300 people were reported dead after an attack by herdsmen in Benue state in February.
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Frequent attacks from Fulani herdsmen in the central region of the country threaten to destabilize the area.
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Earlier this year, he spoke out saying it was unfair to blame him for the herdsmen killings.
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The herdsmen danced and improvised poems in the cows' honor, and the leader of the herd was celebrated.
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Buhari, who is ethnically linked to Fulani herdsmen, has faced criticism for his perceived silence over the attacks.
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Mr. Buhari has also been silent about allegations that the nomadic Fulani herdsmen are raping and killing southerners.
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Although strife between herdsmen and farmers dates back centuries, it has escalated sharply as climate change pushes herders south.
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Herdsmen traditionally roam freely across West Africa, entering and leaving Nigeria through porous borders with Benin, Niger and Cameroon.
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But killings by armed herdsmen, believed to be Fulani on farming settlements in central states, have increased this year.
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Hundreds have been killed in battles as herdsmen roam into new territory to look for vegetation for their cattle.
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"The farmers will lose their farms, impunity of the herdsmen will increase, and there will be more violence," he added.
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The chief of a neighbouring village says his palace was destroyed in an air strike after the herdsmen had left.
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What's more, more than half the leopards killed every year are hunted down by mountain herdsmen to protect their livestock.
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They are angry at the relative ease at which the herdsmen repeatedly attack vulnerable communities across the country's central region.
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David Mbatia, one of the teachers, said he was afraid that the herdsmen who had invaded farms might kill him.
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The Fulani are traditionally Muslim, and some radicalized herdsmen have engaged in jihad against Christian farmers, especially in Plateau State.
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The worshippers are Christians of the Berom tribe, farmers of north-central Nigeria, who have spent 15 years fighting Fulani herdsmen.
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The government says it will re-establish grazing pathways for nomadic herdsmen, and it is offering amnesty payments in the Delta.
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Another longtime battle is flaring in the middle of the country, between farmers and nomadic Fulani herdsmen looking for grazing pastures.
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The entire topography in northern Nigeria has changed in the last five years, meaning that herdsmen and cattle don't have grasses.
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Fortifying livestock corrals with wire mesh roofs will keep the leopards out and reduce the number of cats killed by herdsmen.
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Violence between the Fulani herdsmen, who are mostly Muslims, and farmers, who are predominantly Christians in Nigeria dates back to 2013.
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However, Danladi Ciroma, head of the northern arm of the Cattle Herders Association, Miyetti Allah, denied his herdsmen group was involved.
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In Italy the transumanza proceeds along tratturi, lanes etched into the land by herdsmen, cows and other livestock over two millenniums.
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Last month, herdsmen shot and killed a British rancher in Laikipia, the same ruggedly beautiful area north of Nairobi where Mrs.
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She said the invading herdsmen had destroyed one of her tractors and a secluded retreat on her property favored by tourists.
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But he's in awe of the desert tribes' nomadic lifestyle: Fulani herdsmen, or the salt caravans dealing in the Sahara's 'white gold'.
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The blame quickly fell on nomadic Fulani herdsmen, who have also been held responsible for a wave of similar attacks across Nigeria.
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More than 70 percent of farmers there have abandoned their land, and many herdsmen can no longer get their cattle to market.
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Ciroma said the herders group is just as invested in finding a solution to the pastoral and herdsmen conflict in the country.
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He accused the governor of enforcing the law, which prohibits cattle grazing in some parts of the state, without consulting the herdsmen.
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The attackers thought to be Fulani herdsmen razed over 50 houses in an attempt to sacked the entire community, state police said.
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Herdsmen have driven hundreds of thousands of cattle south, cutting fences along the way to get at grass they think is rightfully theirs.
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Local police said Fulani herdsmen attacked Ancha village, in the Bassa local government area of Plateau state, in the early hours of Friday.
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Clashes between semi-nomadic herdsmen and farmers over herding rights have also led to bloodshed in central and northern parts of the country.
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It was the custom for the herdsmen to insult one another; I won't repeat what they said—it was always about your mother. . . .
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The violence, thought to be carried out by armed herdsmen, flared on Saturday in Jos, the capital city of Plateau State, police said.
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Clashes between mostly lighter-skinned Tuareg and black Fulani herdsmen, often over land and watering points, have killed dozens of civilians this year.
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He also denied media reports saying he described the killings as "retaliatory attacks" by herdsmen who had lost their cattle in the area.
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Ryan Cummings, Director Signal Risk, told CNN that state legislation that prevent herdsmen from owning grazing lands have worsened disputes in the region.
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Nigeria has been plagued by violent Islamist groups like Boko Haram in the north, and killings thought to be perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen.
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Mathew Lempurkel, the member of parliament for Laikipia North, blames the violence on the police, and says that herdsmen are justified in shooting back.
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His tour will begin in the "Middle Belt" state of Taraba, where herdsmen have farmers have fought over dwindling arable land, his office said.
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Violence between the nomadic Fulani herdsmen, who are mostly Muslims, and farmers, who are predominantly Christians, in Nigeria's middle belt dates back to 2013.
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At least 72 people were killed in January following weeks of violence between nomadic herdsmen and farmers killed Benue State, another central region state.
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Lagos, Nigeria (CNN)A mass burial was held on Thursday for 72 people killed in fighting between nomadic herdsmen and farmers in central Nigeria.
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In much of Nigeria, especially the mostly Christian south, Fulani herdsmen are considered terrorists and compared to Boko Haram, notorious for rapes and beheadings.
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Gombe State has such a reputation for peaceful relations that it has begun attracting migrating herdsmen from other, more volatile regions, further cramping space.
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Herdsmen the world over tend to be capable of great aggressiveness and violence because of their vulnerability to losing their primary resources, their animals.
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Herdsmen involved in the communal violence are mainly Muslims from the Fulani ethnic group, while members of the settled farming communities are mostly Christian.
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Nigeria has made preventing attacks by armed herdsmen a security priority in Africa's most populous country, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari said in April.
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Observers argue that without grazing routes to follow, herdsmen cannot avoid trespassing on farms (indeed they can also be spotted trudging through Abuja, the capital).
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She needed to go back to her ancestral home in the southeast, she said, because Fulani herdsmen had just murdered her grandfather on his farm.
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Herdsmen driving cattle from Chad to northern Nigeria now detour south, across Bénoué National Park, where cows compete with a dwindling elephant population for food.
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Numerous regional bodies, including the Economic Community of West African States, have pledged to protect the rights of herdsmen, but little action has been taken.
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That can include supporting drought-resistant or saltwater-resistant crops, and offering microinsurance to farmers and herdsmen so that a drought does not devastate them.
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"The emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari has emboldened the Fulani herdsmen who have been invading Christian communities, killing, maiming and destroying with impunity," he said.
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In the dark I could make out the herdsmen on foot using their bastoni to redirect a few cows that had wandered into the brush.
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Mass killings by armed herdsmen, amid clashes with farming communities in the central-belt region of Nigeria, have claimed the lives of hundreds of people.
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"Xinjiang's training centers now offer regular vocational training to officials, farmers and herdsmen, and the public who are willing to gain certain skills," Zakir said.
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Elsewhere, clashes between Muslim Fulani herdsmen and largely Christian farmers in southern Kaduna, in Nigeria's fractious Middle Belt, have killed at least 22010 people since December.
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"Jallikattu is linked to the welfare of the indigenous Kangayam breed," says P Sakthivel, a herdsmen from Madurai district whose learned his trade from his father.
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Nomadic herdsmen and local farmers have for decades clashed over land and resources in the West African country, but fighting has sharply escalated in recent weeks.
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Violence between farmers and herdsmen in four states may have cost the country $14 billion or more a year in lost revenues, according to Mercy Corps.
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Muslim herdsmen, mainly of the Fulani ethnic group, and Christian farmers often clash over the use of land in remote areas of the Middle Belt region.
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At least 72 people were killed in January following weeks of violence between nomadic herdsmen and farmers in the central part of the West African country.
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And with many herdsmen cut off from markets in the struggling Far North, wildlife workers fear they may discover a new, more lucrative trade: ivory poaching.
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Two witnesses told Reuters more than 20 people were killed and many were injured in the attack which they said involved herdsmen shooting and burning houses.
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The herdsmen thunder ultimatums at state assemblies that dare to enact laws regulating their business practices, which include murder, kidnapping, rape and the destruction of farms.
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The shutdown of the Maiduguri cattle market — one of the biggest in west Africa — has, overnight, made hundreds of cattle traders, herdsmen, butchers and laborers unemployed.
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At least 72 people were killed in January following weeks of clashes between nomadic herdsmen and farmers in the central part of the West African country.
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The country has been plagued by gangs of armed bandits preying on villagers, clashes between herdsmen and farmers and the continuing Islamist insurgency of Boko Haram.
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The government imposed a 24-hour curfew on parts of Kaduna state this week after clashes between herdsmen and villagers killed at least 14 in the region.
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Residents say politicians hoping to win votes in an August election are encouraging herdsmen desperate for grazing to bring tens of thousands of cattle into the area.
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Furious Nigerians have taken to social media to voice their anger at the relative ease at which the herdsmen repeatedly attack vulnerable communities across the Middle Belt.
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The men, aged between 18 and 20, are part of a small Pokot community of herdsmen who tend cows, goats, sheep, camels and donkeys in Baringo County.
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At least 86 people died following attacks carried out by armed herdsmen in farming settlements in Plateau, a state in the north central region of the country.
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"Farmers in the targeted communities keep away from farms as a result of attacks ... the herdsmen destroy farmlands and crops, making farming impossible," said Obodoekwe of the CEHRD.
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Violence between the nomadic Fulani herdsmen, who are mostly Muslims, and farmers, who are predominantly Christians, have rocked Nigeria's Middle Belt since 2013 and are becoming more common.
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The nomadic herdsmen are well organized, have articulate spokesmen and even openly endorse presidential candidates, as they did in the February elections that returned Mr. Buhari to power.
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Violent clashes between the Fulani herdsmen, who are mostly Muslims, and farmers, who are predominantly Christians, in the central state dates to 2013, according to local media reports.
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Muslim herdsmen, mainly of the Fulani ethnic group, and Christian farmers often clash over the use of land in parts of central Nigeria, known as the Middle Belt.
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Unusable for farmers, links land was left to the herdsmen and hunters, and to the first golfers in Scotland who found a landscape ideally suited to their game.
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Conflict between farmers and herdsmen in just four Nigerian states could cost the country at least $14 billion annually in lost potential revenues, according to aid agency Mercy Corps.
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The police's lack of action to counter the attacks on big landowners also encouraged crime against local herdsmen and villagers, who might farm less than an acre, she said.
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The ICG says three things have worsened the crisis: First, environmental challenges in the north have impacted arable lands, forcing herdsmen to encroach on farming settlements in central states.
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"This has led herdsmen to lead cattle onto land which is allocated to farming communities, leading to outbreaks of violence which are very much reciprocal in nature," he added.
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Conflict between farmers and herdsmen in just four Nigerian states could cost the country at least $14 billion annually in lost potential revenues, aid agency Mercy Corps said last year.
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The executive secretary of the Benue emergency agency, Emmanuel Shior, on Thursday said around 80,000 people who had fled herdsmen attacks were living in four camps located across the state.
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Buhari said that some of the armed herdsmen were trained by Libya's security services under the country's former ruler, Moammar Gadhafi, who was ousted from power and killed in 2011.
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"Ending the recent upsurge of attacks on communities by herdsmen reportedly armed with sophisticated weapons is now a priority on the Buhari administration's agenda for enhanced national security," said Shehu.
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Across parts of Nigeria, conflicts that mirror the 20th-century range wars in the American West have broken out between farmers and herdsmen vying for land, leading to bloody battles.
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About two years ago, local leaders created a mediation process to deal with these kinds of disputes after worries that the official legal system was corrupt and biased against herdsmen.
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ABUJA, Nigeria — Clashes between armed herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria are escalating to increasingly violent episodes as a battle for scarce resources stirs long-held tensions over religion and ethnicity.
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Three months ago, Adaji returned to their home in Nigeria's middle belt region to learn that armed herdsmen had stabbed her husband and dragged him through the fields until he died.
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While farmers lay the blame squarely on the herdsmen, some experts and locals said the vilification of the Fulani had seen them also come under attack, fuelling a cycle of revenge.
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Meat the family It would be hard to find a more dedicated group of herdsmen than the tribe who live on the banks of the Nile, north of the capital Juba.
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While glamping has gained ground, China's genuine campers—nomadic herdsmen—have been settled, often forcibly, under successive policies that have divided common land, banned free grazing and compelled households to move.
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ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari appealed for calm and an end to communal violence on Saturday after police said armed herdsmen killed 19 people in the central state of Plateau.
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But local farmers face multiple challenges - from floods, to a lack of electricity to regulate irrigation, to fighting with semi-nomadic cattle herdsmen that has claimed hundreds of lives this year.
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The Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast has helped to push herders into central Nigeria, say analysts, while changes in the north's climate also encourage nomadic herdsmen to move further south.
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After their communally managed land became bare earth studded with cactuses, herdsmen brought their cattle onto private land where grass still grew because the owners had built dams and prevented overgrazing.
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Police and local politicians said seven people were killed on Monday when armed herdsmen, suspected to be Fulani, clashed with locals in the southeastern town of Ukpabi Nimbo, in Enugu state.
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In late April, about 30 nomadic Fulani herdsmen were blamed for storming St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church in the rural Middle Belt and killing at least 17 worshipers and two priests.
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ABUJA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian herdsmen armed with guns killed 20 farmers and injured eight other people in a mosque in the western central Niger state this weekend, police said on Monday.
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The proposed law would create a commission with the power to seize land, and after paying compensation to the owner, assign it as a grazing reserve for use by the Fulani herdsmen.
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Meanwhile dung is piled high into heaps for burning, the fine peach-colored ash used as another form of antiseptic and sunscreen by the herdsmen, shielding them from the 115-degree heat.
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Community group, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, said herdsmen had been "unjustifiably accused and maligned" in the area and had also come under attack, prompting a cycle of revenge.
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However, the escalating conflict between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria's central states is said to be "six times deadlier" than Boko Haram-related attacks this year, according to the International Crisis Group.
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And though he has done little to contain the violence or help herdsmen, he is often perceived as siding with Fulanis, who are one of the major ethnic groups of the north.
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LAGOS (Reuters) - Semi-nomadic herdsmen armed with guns killed 16 people on Tuesday in an attack on a church congregation in a central state of Nigeria plagued by communal violence, police said.
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The spike in violence has become increasingly political ahead of elections in February 2019 with critics of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is Fulani, accusing him of failing to get tough with the herdsmen.
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The fight is between Fulani herdsmen and indigenous tribesmen in Nigeria's "Middle Belt", which covers the central swathe of the country and is populated by Muslims and Christians of more than 200 ethnicities.
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They have proved adept at exploiting local tensions between ethnic groups to sow discord — such as those between mostly lighter-skinned Tuareg and black Fulani herdsmen over scarce watering points in the Sahara.
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But Buhari, who has visited affected states to commiserate with those involved in the conflict, said he could not be blamed for the actions of herdsmen suspected to have carried out the killings.
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State police spokesman Terver Akase told CNN the attackers were thought to be Fulani cattle herdsmen, Bello Bodejo, head of the cattle herders association, Miyetti Allah, denied the group's involvement in the attacks.
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To take advantage of the new grazing lands, herdsmen are pushing their flocks deeper into what was once snow leopard territory, bringing the predator into ever greater contact with humans and their livestock.
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Kola Cissé, who is not related to the candidate, is a local activist who is working to resolve a violent conflict between Fulani herdsmen and Dogon hunters and farmers in the central region.
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Critics of Buhari, a Muslim who is Fulani, have accused him of failing to crack down on herdsmen because they are from the same ethnic group - an accusation his administration has repeatedly denied.
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Thousands of herdsmen mainly from the Fulani ethnic group have moved southwards in the last few years to flee spreading desertification in the north, putting pressure on dwindling fertile land amid rapid population growth.
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Deadly violence broke out last month in one village between nomadic Fulani herdsmen and members of the Buduma ethnic group, who left their Lake Chad island homes last year following Boko Haram attacks there.
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It is now wracked with near-daily violence from extremists pouring over its northern border with Mali and Niger, restive farmers and herdsmen battling for land, and militias bent on vengeance for each attack.
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Mr Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist who styles himself "Arkadag", the "Protector", threw himself into the campaign, crooning a song of his own composition to gas workers and doling out televisions to herdsmen in the desert.
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The attack on Lawaru and its surrounding villages was probably carried out by nomadic Fulani herdsmen, a group that is scattered across much of west Africa's semi-arid Sahel, from Mali to the Central African Republic.
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"The government has allowed insecurity to burgeon in other areas of Nigeria without similar deployments," he said, citing attacks by Fulani herdsmen that have killed hundreds of people in central Nigeria over the last few years.
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But now he and other herdsmen are facing a serious threat to their way of life: Nigeria's rapidly expanding population means more people want to farm on land that has been used by herders for centuries.
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Many of the invading herdsmen are young Samburu, and ecologists say that in recent decades, the group's land has been thoroughly overgrazed, driving the herders to new areas, whether others are already living there or not.
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He was responding to public "clamor" to run again, his spokesman said, but among those caught up in clashes between semi-nomadic herdsmen and settled farmers in the central Benue state there was little sign of enthusiasm.
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For years, the semi-nomadic, cattle-herding Fulani and more settled farming communities have clashed over land use as lower rainfall, advancing desertification and overgrazing drive the herdsmen toward more fertile land in the south of Nigeria.
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But violence has soared in recent months between the herdsmen and farmers - due to the ongoing harvest season - and the worst bloodshed the region has witnessed in years could worsen unless the state intervenes, security analysts say.
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Around 1,300 deaths have been caused by sectarian violence - mainly involving herdsmen and farmers in Kaduna - since January 2016, compared with some 850 inflicted by Boko Haram, according to the Council on Foreign Relations' Nigeria Security Tracker.
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The growth of cut flower farms has intensified competition for dwindling grazing land and vanishing water supplies for the herdsmen whose traditional grazing grounds between Lake Naivasha and Mount Longonot have shrunk as the industry has expanded.
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In the Middle Belt, fragility on an issue that was previously a source of political strength is in part due to accusations that he has not cracked down on herdsmen because they are from his Fulani ethnic group.
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Peter Zion,31, a member of a state government task force set up to defend farms, was recuperating in hospital after being shot and cut across his face and torso by herdsmen wielding guns and cutlasses on Jan.
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DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A drive to find common ground among central Nigeria's warring Muslim herdsmen and Christian farmers has resolved more than 500 land disputes and averted fresh violence, the charity behind the initiative said on Thursday.
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Herdsmen and hunters have also long observed that grazing animals often tend to align themselves facing either north or south, which the researchers suspected was in readiness to escape in either of those directions should a threat emerge.
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In July, at least 86 people were killed in a weeklong attack in Plateau state, and 72 people died in a New Year's Day massacre in January in Benue state in the face off between herdsmen and farmers.
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Lulu was a great inventor of games, which often incorporated whatever she'd read most recently: one day we were stinkbugs looking for the right leaf on which to lay our eggs; another we were herdsmen fleeing Mongolian invaders.
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Passengers will be ferried free of charge by bus on a roughly three-hour trip to Abuja along a road famous for kidnappings and banditry in a region where nomadic herdsmen and farmers engage in frequent deadly clashes.
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To explain why, Latzer quotes the work of psychologists Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen: Unlike the North, which was settled by farmers from England, Holland, and Germany, the South was settled by herdsmen from the fringes of Britain.
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There have been at least 103 clashes involving herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria in the last five years, compared to just 20 in the 15 years before that, according to data from the Lagos-based research firm SB Morgen.
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Dalit herdsmen and leather traders have suffered numerous attacks by "cow vigilantes," and earlier this year violent clashes erupted over the 200th anniversary of a colonial-era battle in which Dalits sided with the British against upper-caste Hindus.
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And security forces have been stretched as they try to tackle Islamists waging a decade-long insurgency in the northeast, banditry in the northwest and clashes between nomadic herdsmen and farming communities over dwindling arable land in central states.
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Lagos, Nigeria (CNN)Escalating conflict between herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria is "six times deadlier" than Boko Haram-related attacks this year, posing a great threat to the country's stability, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report.
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Lagos, Nigeria (CNN)Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has said it is unjust to blame him for the actions of herdsmen suspected to have carried out a wave of killings in the country's Middle Belt in the past few months.
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In Nigeria Christians say they are at ever-increasing risk both from the Boko Haram terrorist group, part of which is aligned with the jihadists of Islamic State, and from Muslim Fulani herdsmen who have attacked crop-growing farmers.
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Raids by Fulani herdsmen armed with guns, bows and machetes on communities in Benue and Enugu state since February have destroyed villages, killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to flee, according to the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR).
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The Nigerian Senate is considering a bill to establish grazing reserves across the country, seeking to reduce violence and ease tensions between the herdsmen and farmers in a nation that is home to the largest equal mix of Christians and Muslims.
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"We will look for someone who is fit to protect lives and property in Nigeria," said Philip Usartse, a farmer who fled with his family when armed herdsmen attacked their village in January, leaving corpses and burnt houses in their wake.
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Habila is among 27,000 people in Kaduna who have been forced to flee their homes due to violence between Muslim herdsmen and largely Christian farmers which has killed at least 800 people since September, according to church leaders in the region.
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This month, the government announced it would send troops to the area after herdsmen shot dead a British military veteran who ran a safari company in Kenya when he went to inspect a friend's house that had been burnt down.
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The militancy is a further challenge for a government faced with an insurgency by the Islamist militant Boko Haram group in the northeast and violent clashes between armed nomadic herdsmen and locals over land use in various parts of the country.
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Sometimes water is the trigger, as last year when conflicts over pasture land and water led to violence in both northern Kenya, and central Nigeria, where 11 people were killed in an attack by Fulani herdsmen on a farming community.
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But this year, attacks by Fulani - the main ethnic group of nomadic herdsmen in Nigeria - on civilians have been about 50 percent more frequent than Boko Haram strikes, shows the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project - a public dataset.
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MAKURDI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Seventy-three people killed since the start of the year in communal violence between semi-nomadic herdsmen and farmers were buried in Nigeria on Thursday highlighting a bloody conflict over fertile land that is taking on political significance.
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There is a high risk that the disease could spread to the West African nation's neighbors amid insecurity in the region, the movement of nomadic herdsmen and limited health facilities in the affected areas, the WHO said in a statement.
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Four years on, Buhari has faced criticism over increasing attacks by terror group Boko Haram in Nigeria's northeast, frequent attacks from Fulani herdsmen in the central region of the country and a growing separatist movement in the east of the country.
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Chidera's grandfather is only one of the hundreds of people who have been murdered by Fulani herdsmen — cattle herders from northern Nigeria who, until recently, were benign figures in the southern imagination, walking across the country with their grazing cattle.
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He was attacked in January by nomadic herdsmen in the central Nigerian state of Benue, caught in the crossfire of a violent feud with local farmers over land rights that has killed hundreds in the country's Middle Belt this year.
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In his meeting with President Buhari at the White House this year, Mr. Trump commented on the killings of Christians in Nigeria's Middle Belt, where clashes over land use have broken out between mostly Christian farmers and mostly Muslim herdsmen.
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The incidents are a further challenge for a government faced with an insurgency by the Islamist militant Boko Haram group in the northeast, and clashes between armed nomadic herdsmen and local people over land use in various parts of Nigeria.
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"Herdsmen, who generally stem from the Fulani ethnic group of northern Nigeria, are traditionally nomadic and therefore not considered 'indigenes' of Nigeria's Middle Belt states such as Benue, which complicates their ability to own land upon which the herds can graze," Cummings said.
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ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's government has made preventing attacks by armed herdsmen a security priority in Africa's most populous country, a spokesman for the president said on Wednesday in the wake of an attack that may have left up to 50 people dead.
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The militancy is a further challenge for a government faced with an insurgency by the Islamist militant Boko Haram group in the northeast, as well as violent clashes between armed nomadic herdsmen and locals over land use in various parts of the country.
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Abdullahi was recognized for providing shelter for hundreds of Christians fleeing attacks from Muslim herdsmen who had launched coordinated attacks on Christian farmers in 10 villages in the Barkin Ladi area of Plateau State on June 23, 2018, the award organizers said in a statement.
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Herdsmen on foot used bastoni, long curved sticks, to whack the rumps of any cows who veered too far off the path, while the cowboys on horseback patrolled the edges of the line, whooping "oh-oh, ay ay" and brandishing their own bastoni when needed.
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Key states to watch include the commercial hub of Lagos, oil-rich Rivers in the Niger Delta region, and Benue state in Nigeria's middle belt, where pastoral conflict between herdsmen and farmers has killed more than 1,300 people since the start of last year.
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Buhari, in a meeting with Catholic bishops on Thursday, "explained that the policy proposed by federal government in response to the frequent clashes between herdsmen and farmers in the country is not meant to colonize any part of the country", his spokesman said in an emailed statement.
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Once DNA could be extracted from ancient bones, however, it showed that although agriculture had indeed reached Europe from the Middle East, a wave of immigration from the north-east, starting about 5,000 years ago, had diluted those first farmers with tall herdsmen from the Pontic Steppe.
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It added to a long list of security challenges: an insurgency in the northeast by jihadist group Boko Haram; violent clashes between nomadic herdsmen and farming communities over grazing rights in the middle of the country; and attacks by militants on oil facilities in the Niger Delta.
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Add to this desolation an early "lean season" — the precarious time between harvests when temperatures soar, rainfall is scant, and hunger, even in good years, is a threat to the area's subsistence farmers and herdsmen — and the stage is set for starvation on a mass scale.
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Consider the most critical issue that plagues the Nigerian polity at this moment, a devastating menace that threatens the very base of national existence: the deadly exploits of so-called nomadic herdsmen, whose grisly clashes with farmers have claimed thousands of Nigerian lives in recent years.
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Word of the Day adjective: relating to shepherds or herdsmen or devoted to raising sheep or cattle adjective: (used with regard to idealized country life) idyllically rustic noun: a country person noun: a short poem descriptive of rural or pastoral life _________ The word bucolic has appeared in 101 articles on nytimes.
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"Talking to local herdsmen and ranchers during my initial study up in northern Kenya, I collated many anecdotal stories of elephants breaking open wild beehives as they foraged in Acacia trees, and the bees coming out and stinging the elephant up the trunk, around the eyes and in the mouth," she recalls.
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His critics also called into question his strongest political asset, his military credentials, when Nigeria was hit by a series of security challenges: the Niger Delta oil attacks, an upsurge in clashes between herdsmen and farmers in the central states, and a resurgence in the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in the north.
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