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afrol News, 30 May - Again, there are reports of between 10 and 15 Fulani herdsmen killed in the central Nigerian Plateau State. This is the latest of a row of assaults that has killed about 600 Fulani, thousands of their cattle and driven tens of thousands out of central and eastern Nigeria - some of them taking refuge in neighbouring Cameroon. Military officials have confirmed the death of at least 10 Fulani semi-nomadic herdsmen in Plateau State since clashes again started on Monday in the communities of Bassa, Riyom and Bukuru. The fresh clashes reportedly are between the Muslim Fulani herdsmen and Christian Kwol and Miango cultivators. Indifferences over access to increasingly scarce land resources seem to lie at the bottom of the conflict. The attacks allegedly started with Kwol cultivators killing cows belonging to Fulani cattle herders on Monday and then went on to attack Fulani settlements, killing several. The clashes then spread to neighbouring villages, where also Miango cultivators participated in the killings. Military spokesman, Lt-Col Ayo Olaniyan, told journalists that only the quick intervention of the state's security task force had secured that the violence did not spread to neighbouring villages as it had done on several occasions earlier. Ethnic clashes between cultivators and herdsmen in Plateau State have escalated over the past nine months. A major attack on the Fulani community in state capital Jos in September last year killed between 500 and 600. Several smaller attacks on the Fulanis have followed in that state. Attacks on Fulani pastoralists - who produce 75 percent of the protein needs of the country - are becoming incessant, particularly in central and eastern states like Plateau, Nasarawa, Bauchi, Taraba and Benue. While the Fulani constitute a very low percentage of the population in the zone, they often occupy between 50 and 90 percent of the lands. The sedentary peoples however occupy the most fertile lands, best suited for agriculture. Also in eastern Taraba state, clashes between Fulani herdsmen and Tiv and Jukun cultivators have claimed more than 60 lives since January this year. Over 50,000 cattle had also been killed in the January assaults. Immediately after the January clashes in Taraba, over 20,000 Fulani herdsmen fled the province to their ethnic kinfolks in nearby Cameroon, taking large amounts of livestock with them. Land use in the zone always has been extensive, and sharing of land resources between agriculturalists and herdsmen has been customary for centuries. Now, with an increased population, land resource conflicts are increasing.
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