Politics of Space and Identity: Reimaging Herdsmen/Farmers Crisis in Nigeria

Protracted herdsmen/farmers’ crisishas compounded endemic internal conflicts in Nigeria. Despite the volume of existing scholarship on the phenomenon, the complexity it has continued to assume has created the lacuna for scholarly reimaging. Using primary and secondary sources of data, this study seeks to establish the nexus between elitist politicisation of space and identity and the intricacies of herdsmen/farmers’ conflict from historical, political, sociological, economic, cultural and structural variables. Findings revealed that although the harmful effect of climate change have triggered aggressive herdsmen/farmers’ interactions, the politics of space and identity arising from politicization of Land Use Act; elite conspiracy; indigene/settlers dichotomy; subversion of mutual interests among stakeholders in crop/cattle agro-economy; and partisan disposition of governments’ intervention strategies constitute the central problematic. Continued politcisation of herdsmen/farmers’ crisis is a potential trigger of civil unrest and a threat to intergroup harmony and national integration. Therefore, stakeholders should facilitate problem-solving policy responses to the inherent challenges confronting crop/cattle agro-economy and influence inclusive governance, thereby promoting equal sense of belonging and intergroup harmony in the citizenry.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.