Dry Season That Never Left: How Changing Rainfall Patterns Are Pushing Herders Into Taraba Farmlands

 

Jalingo, March 14, 2026

By Thomas Samuel 

For generations, farmers and herders in Taraba State managed to coexist by following nature's rhythm a wet season for planting, a dry season for migration. That rhythm is now broken.

Communities around Jalingo are grappling with a new and dangerous reality: unpredictable rainfall has erased the clear boundary between seasons, shortening grazing windows in the north and pushing herders southward earlier, longer, and increasingly in conflict with farmers still on their land.

The result is a collision of climate stress and human survival one that is quietly fuelling some of the deadliest violence in Nigeria's Middle Belt.

Seasons Out of Order

Mallam Usman Garba has farmed yam and maize in the Ardo-Kola area for over two decades. He remembers when the seasons were dependable.

"In the past, rains started reliably in April and lasted till October. We harvested and the herders came after," he said. "Now the rains are late and irregular. Last year we had dry spells of two weeks even in the middle of the rainy season. My crops dried up in patches. When the herders arrive early with their cattle, they eat everything before we can harvest. We lose our food and income. How can we not quarrel?"

Mama Aisha Yakubu, a cassava farmer near Nukkai, describes a soil that no longer holds moisture the way it once did.

"The dry season now feels longer. Even when rain falls, it doesn't stay. The soil is tired and dries very fast," she said. "Herders used to pass through in December and January. This year some came in October while we were still harvesting. Their cows destroyed two of my cassava farms. We reported to the village head, but the damage was already done. Climate is changing and bringing hunger and fighting with it."

Flooding and Drought — Sometimes in the Same Field

Rice farmer David Tijjani in the Specialist community area says the unpredictability itself has become the crisis.

"Rainfall patterns have shifted badly in the last five to seven years. We now see heavy rain one day and then nothing for weeks. Flooding destroys some fields while drought kills others," he said. "Herders stay longer because there is no good grass up north. 

When their animals enter our rice fields, one night can finish months of work. This has caused serious fights in our community. Some herders are understanding, but many come with armed guards now. Everyone is afraid."

Herders Are Struggling Too

Ardo Bello Mohammed, a Fulani community representative and herder leader, says his people are not moving south by choice.

"Our traditional routes are broken. The north is drier for longer periods. What we call the dry season now starts earlier and ends later," he said. "We used to move south around November and return by April or May. Now we move in October and sometimes stay till June or July because the rains are not reliable up north. When we arrive and farmers have not finished harvesting, conflict happens. Our cattle are hungry too. We don't want war — we want grass and water."

Mohammed called on government to establish functional grazing reserves and clearly demarcated corridors to reduce the overlap between herder movement and active farmland. "If there are proper routes and grazing areas, we will use them. But right now there is nothing," he said.

Climate Change at the Root

Local officials and environmental experts link these shifting patterns directly to climate change. Reduced and increasingly erratic rainfall across Nigeria's northern belt, combined with advancing desertification, is compressing the time and space available for traditional pastoral migration. 

As grazing land shrinks in the north, herders are moving further south into Taraba's greener but densely cultivated lands — arriving during planting and harvesting seasons rather than after them.

Taraba State has recorded repeated outbreaks of farmer-herder violence over the past decade, with communities in Ardo-Kola, Gassol, Ibi, and Wukari among the worst affected. Beyond the deaths and displacement, the conflict is eroding food security across the state. 

Farmers are abandoning land out of fear. Herders are losing cattle they cannot replace. Both communities are caught in a cycle of loss driven not only by human decisions, but by a changing climate neither group caused.

As world leaders prepare to gather at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye later this year to negotiate climate action, communities in Taraba are not waiting for global solutions. They are surviving season by uncertain season.