Power Asymmetry and Resource Use Conflict Between Farmers and Pastoralists in Northern Nigeria

Northern Nigeria can be described as a “zone of instability” in Nigeria. Since the country’s independence in 1960, Nigeria has witnessed a myriad of conflicts ranging from religious, ethnic to political including a brutal three year civil war. Though many of the conflicts are widespread, the northern region appears to have been the epicentre of several interlocking conflicts. The north of Nigeria is characterised by three major types of conflict, which are different but interrelated in nature, namely: inter-ethnic, religious and resource conflicts. This paper focuses on resource use conflict between farmers and pastoralists which can be explained by a variety of factors including scarcity of resources, growth in the population of herds and humans, the political economy of land use and asymmetry in power relations between the two resource users. The paper argues that historically the control of political power has vacillated between the two resource users. In the past, pastoralists were politically powerful in many states in the African savannah and Sahel including northern Nigeria; and hence, had access to land and land based resources for their livestock. In the contemporary dispensation, sedentary crop farmers are the politically dominant and “landed” group, and have often made it difficult for the pastoralists, the “landless” group, to access land and land based resources for their livestock. There is thus a fierce contest for environmental resources between the two resource users, mediated by power relations, and often resulting in violent conflict. The paper concludes that though scarcity of resources is often considered as a key explanatory variable in resource use conflict between farmers and pastoralists, the effects of scarcity are unevenly distributed in the “unequal world” of farmers and pastoralists in Northern Nigeria.