An average cow sells for between ₦650,000 and ₦2 million. To earn ₦20 million from cattle sales, a herder would need to sell roughly 20 cows, and that income would typically be generated over several years of hard work, breeding, feeding, and managing the herd migrating from one place to another as the season changes.
Now compare that with armed criminals who collect ransom running into tens of millions of naira within a matter of days/weeks. The economic incentive is obvious: one path requires years of honest labour and patience and they’ve had a taste of that, while the other offers quick money through violence and criminality and dehumanization of their fellow Nigerians.
This is why tackling insecurity requires more than sympathy in my opinion. We must understand the financial motivations behind these crimes and ensure that crime does not become more rewarding than legitimate livelihoods; a thing these guys would reluctantly want to go back to. Even in places where they do sulhu with them (often when they’ve made plenty of this ill-gotten money and want to spend in “peace”), the question remains, when the cash is depleted, what is next the venture for these bandits? Cattle rearing that takes patience and years of hard labour or submission to temptation to make quick cash through violence and criminality?
