Benue State Governor
Hyacinth Alia has attributed the prolonged insecurity in the state to Nigeria’s
adoption of the 1999 ECOWAS protocol on cross-border grazing, describing it as
the bedrock of the crisis that has displaced thousands and upended agrarian livelihoods
in the state.
Speaking in a detailed
interview with Vanguard, the Catholic priest-turned-politician lamented the
consequences of the protocol, which allows pastoralists from neighbouring West
African countries to move freely across borders for grazing purposes. According
to him, this framework, which Nigeria formally adopted in 1998, drastically
altered the dynamic between local communities and herders.
“In our growing years, we
used to see herders come during the dry season and leave afterwards. There was
order. But post-1999, what we began to see was entirely different. What is
happening now is not traditional grazing — it is planned, coordinated, and
militarised displacement,” Alia said.
