“When We Believe in State Power, It Tends to Fail Us”: Insights Into the Management of Herder-Peasant Farmer Conflicts in Benue State, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examines management of herder-peasant farmer conflicts and internal security challenges in Benue state, Nigeria. It relied mainly on descriptive and cross-sectional survey designs. Four hundred and seven participants were collated and analyzed from 430 questionnaires distributed in 10 Local Government Areas with an age range of 20–79 years and mean age of 42.84 years. A structured questionnaire was adopted for measuring farmer-herder conflicts and analyzing the strategies deployed in tackling the conflict. The findings showed that certain laws and policies of the government significantly contributed to the onset and protraction of the herder-farmer conflict in Benue state, F (5, 406) = 186.51; p < 0.05. Further findings show that the inherent contradictions in the different policies and laws enacted by the government created obstructions to land access and utilization by the warring parties (herders and farmers). Pursuant to this, the paper linked the obduracy of the conflict to government’s poor handling of land and land-based resources. To address the conflict, the article recommends that land management policies should be unbundled to limit the influence of federal and state governments in land distribution and control.