CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF HERDERS-FARMERS CONFLICT AND ITS GENDER IMPLICATION IN PLATEAU STATE

Abstract

Historically, relations between herders and sedentary farming communities have been harmonious. By and large, they lived in a peaceful, symbiotic relationship: herders’ cattle would fertilise the farmers’ land in exchange for grazing rights. But all of a sudden Clashes between different groups of Fulani herders and farmers erupted which led to lost of thousands of people in Nigeria over the past two decades.  In 2014, more than 1,200 people lost their lives, according to the most recent Global Terrorism Index. The fighting is about some disagreements over the use of essential resources such as farmland, grazing areas and water between herders and local farmers as the major source of the fighting. Fulani herders travel hundreds of miles in large numbers with their cattle in search of pasture. The paper also try to look at some of the drivers which include: climatic changes (frequent droughts and desertification); population growth (loss of northern grazing lands to the expansion of human settlements); technological and economic changes (new livestock and farming practices); crime (rural banditry and cattle rustling); political and ethnic strife (intensified by the spread of illicit firearms); and cultural changes (the collapse of traditional conflict management mechanisms) and the research rely on secondary sources where books, periodic and journals were consulted, gender implication was discussed in order to explore the devastated conditions of women and children who become absolute widows and orphans,  and finally consequences of the herders- farmers conflict was enumerated