We counted the numbers from one to two to five to over 50 as if a lotto forecaster were announcing the winning numbers in a tense draw.
The issue at hand was, indeed, tense, but the figures involved were neither winning numbers nor anything that called for jubilation. They represented the number of individuals who had lost their lives due to the ongoing conflict between local farmers and herders, primarily of Fulani descent, in Agogo, a town located in the Asante Akim-North District of Ghana.
In her paper titled “Addressing the Causes and Consequences of the Farmer-Herder Conflict in Ghana,” Margaret Adomako in September 2019 laid the troubling figures of deaths and analyzed the conflict and the dynamics involved.
So, how did Asante Akyem Agogo come to be notoriously associated with one of Ghana’s prolonged conflicts between local farmers and herders? Well, let’s dive deeper into the issue in the subsequent paragraphs.
According to Adomako, this farmer-herder conflict started to plague Ghana as far back in the 1990s, when the two warring parties would lock horns over water resources and grazing lands. Although many parts of the country, including Bono and the Northern regions, as well as in the Afram Plains of the Eastern region, have and continue to experience this sort of conflict, the Asante Akyem Agogo enclave seems to be its mecca.
Writing under their catchy headline, “The Cattle are ‘Ghanaians’ but the Herders are Strangers: Farmer-Herder Conflicts, Expulsion Policy, and Pastoralist Question in Agogo, Ghana,” Azeez Olaniyan, Michael Francis, and Ufo Okeke-Uzodike observed that the Agogo conflict intensified in 2001.
The farmers have agitated, demonstrated incessantly, and called on the government to expel the herders. For instance, on January 20, 2012, the “Kumasi High Court ordered the Ashanti Regional Security Council (REGSEC) to flush out all Fulani and their cattle from the Agogo Afram plains with immediate effect” (Olaniyan et al., 2015, p. 54).
The court order empowered the farmers to agitate more as they called on the country’s security forces to enforce the order. But little could the law enforcers do in expelling the herders. In fact, Margaret Adomako in her 2019 paper gave an interesting dynamic of how both the farmers and the herders view the police—who were supposed to have carried out the expulsion order—which might partly explain why the court order fell flat.
“Fueling the already existing tensions in the conflict areas is the perception of both parties that the police is biased against them. The locals believe that the police officers accept cattle from the herders to not pursue cases through the criminal justice system, while the herdsmen, on the other hand, believe that the policemen feel a kinship towards the locals and consequently, ensure that reported cases are not accorded the needed attention” (Adomako, 2019, p. 2).
Did the police accept cattle from the herders to renege on the 2012 court order to expel the herders? Well, as we say in Ghana, “you and I were not there.” There has been no evidence to press on that trajectory.
There is, however, enough evidence that, in some cases, the herders have been branded persona non grata. Yet, as Adomako argues, they still exist in Agogo, as some have permanently settled in the area, with others often moving from towns such as Donkorkrom and Ekyiamanfrom through to Agogo.
In 2021, Mary Boatemaa Setrana Justice and Richard Kwabena Owusu Kyei adequately documented that the issue of farmer-herder conflict does not plague Ghana alone. That is, it is prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, with Kenya and Mali, among others, receiving their fair share.
But the question is, what has really been done in the Agogo situation to find an amicable solution to the conflict? When one looks through the historical window, what readily comes to mind is an intervention by the Government of Ghana code named Operation Cow Leg and the policy of expulsion (as aforementioned).
Operation Cow Leg, a military-police taskforce, sought to clampdown on the tension in the Agogo area. This has partly led to the shooting of cattle either by the taskforce or by the local farmers, as they were emboldened by the presence of the taskforce.
Funny enough, Andreas Kamasah, a reporter with Pulse Ghana, writing in 2022 recounted how some police officers in the Asante Akyem North Municipal who were deployed in Operation Cow Leg hurriedly left post over threats by some of the herders that they would shoot to kill them (police) in the bushes.
So then, what next as the conflict broods in its hibernation stage? Read my next post as I detail some interventions that I believe could help solve the conflict.
REFERENCES:
Adomako, M. (2019). (rep.). Addressing the Causes and Consequences of the Farmer-Herder Conflict in Ghana (6th ed., pp. 1–5). Accra, Ghana: KAIPTC.
Kamasah, A. (2022). Officers withdraw from Operation Cow leg as Fulani herdsmen threaten to kill them – MCE. Retrieved from https://www.pulse.com.gh/news/local/officers-withdraw-from-operation-cow-leg-as-fulani-herdsmen-threaten-to-kill-them-mce/977f1se
Setrana, M. B., & Kyei, J. R. (2021). Migration, Farmer-herder Conflict and the Challenges of Peacebuilding in the Agogo Traditional Area, Ghana. Ghana Journal of Geography, 13(2), 1–18. doi:10.4314/gjg.v13i2.13