50.2
The Fulani Moslem Pastoralist Versus Agrarian Armed Conflicts in Nigeria: Causes and Implications for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals Target 2.1
The history of most Sub-Saharan African countries is awash with myriads of widespread incidences of conflicts that usually aggravate human misery, deaths, poverty and hunger. In recent times, the enraging Fulani pastoralist armed conflict with the largely Christian sedentary agrarian farmers in Nigeria accounts as one of the highest of such sporadic conflicts. Most existing explanations of these conflicts has to date, been a panoramic brush overview, comments and opinion piece. Academic work emphasizing on primary research has been largely scarce. The aim of this paper which adopts descriptive survey design methodology explores both conflict victims and other citizen’s perception on the dynamics of the phenomenon. Data collected using questionnaire and qualitative interviews from the north-central and south-east states indicate that there are emerging meta-causes and consequences attendant to this conflict which the federal government has been unable to checkmate. These consequences which have not been analyzed sufficiently in most previous studies on the subject matter includes among others, both agrarian and pastoralist low or no participation in their chosen agricultural activities due to fears of attacks on attending to their land and water resources that are in contention. This phenomenon has occasioned no or scarce food or livestock production for household and small scale farming activities which triggers off sustainable and substantial food insecurity. The paper argues that this has ushered in severe hunger and malnutrition, low or no household incomes, rise in poverty and accelerated increase in non-communicable diseases in these conflict regions. The paper concludes by advancing possible panacea to ending these conflicts, that have made Nigeria food dependent and not contributing to her achievement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals target 2.1 by year 2030.