Influence of Traditional Institutions in Farmer-herder Conflicts Management in Borno State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess the influence of traditional institutions in Farmer-Herder conflicts management in three selected Local Government Areas (Damboa, Jere and Magumeri LGAs) of Borno state, Nigeria. Mutistage sampling technique was used to select 225 sample size respondents which include farmers (150) and herders (75) respectively. A structured questionnaire and interview schedule were used to collect data for this study which was analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and PRA (Pair wise Ranking) tool. The results revealed that (89.3%) of the respondents are of the opinion that, the most preferred strategies for managing conflicts between farmers and herders in the study area are the traditional institutions. Results in Table 2 shows that the farmers ranked the resolution of conflict through the payment of compensation as the first while the herders (Table 3) ranked it second. However, the study recommend that the traditional rulers in conjunction with all the stakeholders at the village level should maintain routine or annual meetings with farmers and herders for the avoidance of conflict between the farmers and herders in the area. Also, traditional institutions should be strengthen through constitutional amendment, thus, to return their power to adjudicate conflict in the rural areas which had been taken away by the 1976 Local Government Reform.