The Financial Neighborhood of West African States (ECOWAS) might must overview its transhumance protocol, which allows cross-border cattle grazing however has inadvertently created alternatives for terrorists posing as herdsmen to incite violence and ethnic tensions throughout the area.
This concern was raised by coverage specialists Dr. Ben Nwosu and Dr. Ndu Nwokolo of Nextier of their latest coverage transient, ‘ECOWAS at 50: Altering Panorama of Regional Politics, Insecurity and Coping Capability.’
Based on the doc, Nwosu and Nwokolo famous, “ECOWAS ought to revisit its protocol on transhumance, which helps cross-border cattle grazing and affords a window for terrorists who disguise themselves as herdsmen to unfold violence and ethnic strife within the area. The union ought to both withdraw or make the Transhumance protocol extra stringent and assist trendy strategies of animal husbandry to mitigate the free motion of ethnicity-driven terrorists.”
Additionally they famous the necessity for ECOWAS to discover army cooperation amongst its members to struggle inside terrorism and violence and scale down or fully cease extreme exterior army involvement, as they construct cycles of dependency that may proceed to stunt the expansion of the sub-region.
ECOWAS ought to set up an intelligence fusion centre to curb terrorism
Along with curbing violence, the authors famous the necessity for ECOWAS to determine an intelligence fusion centre to curb the resurgence of terrorism within the sub-region.
Based on them, “ECOWAS ought to think about establishing an intelligence fusion centre concerning the dominant types of violence within the area, particularly terrorism and agrarian conflicts and use intelligence from such centres to help particular person member states and likewise perform coordinated actions towards violent teams within the area.”
Based on the report, farmer-herder conflicts in Nigeria alone are estimated to have price over 60,000 lives between 2015 and 2024.
Additional killings of greater than 150 people passed off on the eve of the 2023 Christmas in Plateau State.
The identical carnage continues within the Benue Valley of Nigeria’s Center Belt area.
The authors famous that a number of opinions “attribute the violence to jihadist Fulani herdsmen, a few of whom are believed to have migrated into Nigeria from different components of Africa.”
The report additional famous that Boko Haram actions gained new momentum within the North East of Nigeria, overrunning army outposts and taking up extra territories.
Based on the report, “This provides to the burden of over two million individuals who’ve been pressured to Internally displaced individuals (IDP) camps within the area, in addition to greater than 35,000 lives that had been misplaced to their assaults.”
Current studies point out that over 2.2 million folks have been displaced because of farmer-herder conflicts between 2019 and 2025, exacerbating meals insecurity and worsening the general safety scenario throughout the nation.
Based on SBM Intelligence, a data-driven analysis agency, these clashes have advanced past land disputes and are actually more and more linked to organized crimes.
