The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) may need to review its transhumance protocol, which permits cross-border cattle grazing but has inadvertently created opportunities for terrorists posing as herdsmen to incite violence and ethnic tensions across the region.
This concern was raised by policy experts Dr. Ben Nwosu and Dr. Ndu Nwokolo of Nextier in their recent policy brief, ‘ECOWAS at 50: Changing Landscape of Regional Politics, Insecurity and Coping Capacity.’
According to the document, Nwosu and Nwokolo noted, “ECOWAS should revisit its protocol on transhumance, which supports cross-border cattle grazing and offers a window for terrorists who disguise themselves as herdsmen to spread violence and ethnic strife in the region. The union should either withdraw or make the Transhumance protocol more stringent and support modern methods of animal husbandry to mitigate the free movement of ethnicity-driven terrorists.”
They also noted the need for ECOWAS to explore military cooperation among its members to fight internal terrorism and violence and scale down or completely stop excessive external military involvement, as they build cycles of dependency that will continue to stunt the growth of the sub-region.
ECOWAS should establish an intelligence fusion centre to curb terrorism
In addition to curbing violence, the authors noted the need for ECOWAS to establish an intelligence fusion centre to curb the resurgence of terrorism in the sub-region.
According to them, “ECOWAS should consider establishing an intelligence fusion centre about the dominant forms of violence in the region, especially terrorism and agrarian conflicts and use intelligence from such centres to assist individual member states and also carry out coordinated actions against violent groups in the region.”
According to the report, farmer-herder conflicts in Nigeria alone are estimated to have cost over 60,000 lives between 2015 and 2024.
Further killings of more than 150 individuals took place on the eve of the 2023 Christmas in Plateau State.
The same carnage continues in the Benue Valley of Nigeria’s Middle Belt region.
The authors noted that several opinions “attribute the violence to jihadist Fulani herdsmen, some of whom are believed to have migrated into Nigeria from other parts of Africa.”
The report further noted that Boko Haram activities gained new momentum in the North East of Nigeria, overrunning military outposts and taking over more territories.
According to the report, “This adds to the burden of over two million persons who have been forced to Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the region, as well as more than 35,000 lives that had been lost to their attacks.”
Recent reports indicate that over 2.2 million people have been displaced due to farmer-herder conflicts between 2019 and 2025, exacerbating food insecurity and worsening the overall security situation across the country.
According to SBM Intelligence, a data-driven research firm, these clashes have evolved beyond land disputes and are now increasingly linked to organized crimes.