Ranching or Ruin: CDS Musa’s Prescription for Ending Farmers-Herders Conflicts
By Matthew Eloyi
The recurring clashes between farmers and herders remain one of Nigeria’s most persistent security challenges, leaving trails of deaths, displacement, and deepened ethnic tension. At the heart of the crisis lies the question of animal movement, and the country’s inability to modernise livestock management.
The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Christopher Musa, has thrown his weight behind ranching as the sustainable solution to the crisis. Speaking in Abuja ahead of the maiden African Chiefs of Defence Staff Summit scheduled for August 25–27, Musa called for a radical rethink of how Nigerians rear their livestock.
“We must stop killing animals. Traditionally, what we have done before is, if an animal strays into a farm, we arrest it, then the owner comes and pays fine and he takes it back. If we do that, we will have peace,” the CDS explained, lamenting how age-old communal understandings have broken down in today’s Nigeria.
For Musa, the idea of ranching should not be reduced to semantics. “If you don’t want to call it ranching, call it whatever it is, but provide an area where they don’t need to move around,” he argued. His point is clear: livestock must be confined to specific areas to end the perennial clashes with farmers.
The CDS stressed that ranching is not only about security, but also about productivity. “Once animals move around, they spend energy. They are smaller, they don’t produce so much milk for you,” he said, highlighting how free grazing undermines both the economic and nutritional value of livestock.
The logic is straightforward. Animals that roam in search of food and water are vulnerable to theft, conflict, and exhaustion. Ranching, on the other hand, ensures healthier animals, higher yields, and ultimately, fewer clashes with farmers whose crops are often destroyed by straying cattle.
But the bigger challenge is political will. Over the years, proposals for ranching or grazing reserves have been hijacked by ethnic suspicion, bureaucratic lethargy, and outright rejection in some quarters. Musa’s intervention, therefore, places the debate back on the national agenda: without embracing controlled livestock systems, the cycle of farmer-herder violence may persist.
By framing the issue as a security imperative rather than merely an agricultural policy, the CDS has thrown down the gauntlet to policymakers, state governments, and local communities. The question remains: will Nigeria embrace ranching, or continue to count the costs of a preventable conflict?