Introduction
One central aspect of the national question discourse in Nigeria concerns the conflicts and disputes historically driven by the struggles over land and land-based resources generally. Examples of such land-induced conflicts include those of Ife–Modakeke in Osun State; the Jukun–Chamba conflict in Takum Local Government Area of Taraba State; the Tiv–Jukun conflict in Benue and Plateau States and the Umuleri–Aguleri war of attrition over the Otuocha piece of land in Anambra State. However, in spite of the widespread nature of these land-induced conflicts, the land question has received marginal attention in the overall gamut of issues raised by the national question discourse in Nigeria. This article addresses this gap. Drawing on primary data generated from focused group discussions and oral interviews carried out between October 2009 and March 2015 across the locations with pronounced incidences of land-based conflicts in Ekiti, Lagos and Ogun States in South-Western Nigeria, this article examines the impact of economic considerations in the ethnically motivated conflicts in Nigeria over land from 1999 to 2015. It draws on the land conflict in South-Western Nigeria – a conflict that has been running since the 1980s and has stubbornly resurfaced in recent times as a major economic and socio-political problem at the national and state levels in the country. How has land been connected with some of the historical conflicts across the country? How has the character of the state in Nigeria affected the management of ethnically motivated land conflicts? What does the experience of our case study suggest in terms of the resolution of land-based conflicts across the country? This article takes on these questions. It argues that colonialism, through its policies and programmes as well as the administrative structures and political systems put in place by the colonial state, not only changed the material conditions of the populations across Nigeria by forcefully integrating them into the colonial and later world capitalist system – through compelling them to participate in colonial economic activities, largely dominated by the profit motive, thereby negating the autonomous development of the emergent postcolonial state – but also radically altered the complexities and direction of the land question in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Hence, Okwudiba Nnoli's (1986, 129) assertion that colonial and postcolonial societies are characterised by struggles that do not have their actual origins in locally induced changes in the prevailing systems of class relations and material production.
Following this introduction and some notes on methodology, the article is divided into five sections. The first conceptualises ethnic minorities. It examines their etymological and genealogical origins generally and provides a historical and theoretical basis for speaking to the context of their emergence as well as their connection to the land question in Nigeria. The second underlines the centrality of land in Africa's political economy. The third discusses the colonial origins of the land-based conflicts across Nigeria. The fourth examines the land-based conflicts in South-Western Nigeria. The fifth offers the conclusion.
Methodology
In developing this study, data were obtained from primary and secondary sources. Qualitative data were collected from observations, oral interviews and focused group discussions conducted among a purposively selected group of respondents among Hausa–Fulani pastoralists and Yoruba farmers across South-Western Nigeria. These were generated in October 2009, February 2010, and January and February 2013, as well as January to March 2015. According to the 1996 state creation exercise, Nigeria is divided into six geopolitical zones, namely: the North-Central, the North-East, the North-West, the South-East, the South-South and the South-West. Each of these zones comprises six states, which make the 36 states of the federation, with Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory. While South-Western Nigeria comprises Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo States, focused group discussions were conducted in (i) Ado Ekiti, Ijero Ekiti and Oye Ekiti Local Government Areas of Ekiti State; (ii) Agege, Ajeromi-Ifelodun and Mushin Local Government Areas of Lagos State; and (iii) Abeokuta North, Abeokuta South, Ado-Odo/Ota, Ijebu East, Ijebu North, Ijebu North-East, Ijebu Ode and Sagamu Local Government Areas of Ogun State. While the respondents were purposively sampled, the selected local government areas are those with the highest occurrences of ethnically motivated land-based conflicts across the three states sampled. Relying on the services of two research assistants, all the participants who responded to our discussions, interviews and questions were male. While the Yoruba farmers contacted were either Muslims or traditional worshippers, the Hausa–Fulani pastoralists interviewed were mostly Muslims.
Focused group discussions were homogenously conducted on the basis of the ethnic identities of the respondents, that is, between Hausa–Fulani migrant pastoralists and indigenous Yoruba farmers. The groups of discussants comprised a minimum of six and a maximum of 12 discussants. Sixty persons were involved in the focused group discussions: 20 from each of the three states, with a sample of 10 persons chosen from each of the two ethnic groups. While the focused group discussions were limited to members of the general communities within the two ethnic groups across the three states, oral interviews were conducted with 30 persons at the Departments of Public Prosecution as well as the offices of the Attorneys-General and Commissioners of Justice at the Ministries of Justice in the three states. Ten senior government officials were interviewed in each state. To complement those administered to government officials across the three states, 10 oral interviews – involving five Hausa–Fulani pastoralists and five Yoruba farmers – were conducted in each of the three states. This led to a total of 60 oral interviews. Questions were asked on (i) their general experiences with and their knowledge of conflicts in the areas; (ii) the role of land as a major cause of conflict and hostilities in the areas; (iii) the connections between ethnic agitations and the struggles for land among the people; (iv) the influence of class, geographical, racial and resource imbalances in the struggles for land in the states; (v) the impact of all these factors and influences in the articulation of the citizenship question in the region; and the roles played by government at various levels in resolving land-based conflicts in South-Western Nigeria.
Our observations revealed that although the Yoruba are the aboriginal indigenes in South-Western Nigeria, their interactions with the Hausa–Fulani pastoralists date back to the colonial era during which some grazing reserves were provided by the colonial state across the country. From that period, the interactions between members of these two ethnic groups have been characterised by unending accusations of encroachments on farmlands by Yoruba farmers, followed by Hausa–Fulani pastoralists’ unyielding insistence on the right of way for them and their flocks. These experiences have been underlined by mutual suspicions in the context of a tense and volatile atmosphere. Among other considerations underwriting the political economy of land in these areas, the perceived disregard of the migrant settlers for the values of the host Yoruba communities are the immediate triggers of conflict, not just the competition inherent in daily material production.
The qualitative data generated were subjected to systematic content analysis. Among the many challenges encountered during the fieldwork exercise, the problem of mistaken identities and suspicion against the researchers posed a serious threat to our safety. To overcome these problems, we had to build confidence and establish trust with the populations within the two communities as a basis for allaying their unspoken fears, thereby assuring our security in the field. These efforts were complemented with secondary data. Secondary data were drawn largely from the literature on citizenship and indigeneship, as well as land and resource competition in Nigeria and Africa. These were added with the data generated on the court cases involving Hausa–Fulani pastoralists and Yoruba farmers across the three states between 1999 and 2015. In this way, the methodology was inclusive and participatory.
Genealogies of ethnic minorities in Nigeria
This section is divided into two parts. The first examines the genealogical origins of minorities. The second provides a historical and theoretical context for speaking to issues of land within the national question discourse. Broadly, theoretical reflections on the national question are widespread in the literature and ought not to detain us here (Stalin 1953; Lenin 1975; Amin 1978; Chatterjee 1986; Van Ree 1994; Momoh 2002). Various accounts on the experiences with the land question in Africa have also been provided by experts (see Moyo 1995; Moyo 2007; Berry 2002; Anseeuw and Alden 2010).
Minorities have been defined as culturally and relatively cohesive groups, occupying a position of numerical inferiority, actual or potential socio-economic subordination vis-à-vis other cultural sections in a political community (Gurr 1993, 15–23; Suberu 1999, 118). Historically, the term minority is neither exclusive nor unique to any group in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Rather, in terms of its actual origin within the humanities and social sciences, it is associated with the events which led to the First and Second World Wars, in which concern for the fate of national minorities was considered crucial in the relations between the European great powers (Ekeh 1996, 33). During this period, the extent of barbarism and violation of human rights in the Second World War were measured in terms of the repressive and other punitive actions taken against such populations. However, from the post-Second World War period, the term has acquired widespread international usage well beyond Europe and has featured prominently in the discourses and politics of decolonisation across the colonies in Africa and Asia – so much so that the interpretations of the term now vary widely from one region of the modern world to another according to the traditions of historical scholarship and political sociology, especially since its scholarly uses sometimes convey deep differences in meaning.
One perspective towards understanding the term emphasises the disadvantages that minorities suffer in the hands of a majority group that controls the instrument of power, enabled by the political process through which existing majorities and minorities are governed. The other underlines the monopoly of power by a dominant minority, which it achieves either by subverting democratic processes, or more usually by cultivating aristocratic principles of governance. Clearly, Nigerian history has been confronted by both of these types of relationship between majority and minority groups in the exercise of power.
While dominance by majority ethnic groups over minority groups has had special resonance since about 1951–4, which marked the onset of the democratic processes that accompanied decolonisation, the prior history of Nigeria across several centuries was distinguished by instances of dominant minorities that exploited majorities over whom they exercised substantial power. Such dominance by minorities over majorities has usually left behind its reign a bitter residue for modern politics and has besmirched the relations between the former dominant minorities and the groups that they had exploited in the past. There is, therefore, an active relationship between the two forms of the distribution of power among minority and majority groups in Nigerian history. Emergent realities in postcolonial Nigeria have however transformed powerful pre-colonial groups such as the Bini and Ijaw – who once ruled several Igbo subgroups under King Jaja – into minorities. Such transformations also changed the complexion of the land and national questions in important ways (Osaghae 2002, 223). The description of such ethnic groups as minorities in the present times is thus a creation of the retreating British colonial hegemons. This context helps in understanding how modern political exigencies in terms of complex power relations were influenced and shaped by the colonial past.
In Nigeria, the term minorities was used for the first time in the 1950s to refer to newly disadvantaged entities that emerged from the country's constitutional reforms. It emerged from the political processes that prepared Nigeria for independence from British imperial rule in the tense years between 1952 and 1960. During the constitutional changes that began between 1951 and 1954, the existing political culture was challenged by the regrouping of Nigeria's 24 provinces into three political regions of the East, North and West, each with central powers over the provinces placed under it. This centralisation of political power impacted significantly on the ensuing political participation (Osadolor 2002, 31–48). The most serious impacts were (i) the emergence of ethnic power blocs based exclusively on the dominance of the three major ethnic groups, namely the Hausa–Fulani in the North, the Igbo in the East and the Yoruba in the West; (ii) allegations of majority domination by members of the various minority groups within each region and (iii) the differentiation of ethnic groups based on their access to power. Given their demographic advantage, the Igbo and Yoruba became formidable political power holders in southern Nigeria while other ethnic groups, including the historically dominant Bini, became minority ethnic groups. In the North, these developments coincided with the astutely firm determination of the descendants of Usman dan Fodio (the supreme Islamic leader and founder of the Sokoto Caliphate) to expand the boundaries of Fulani aristocratic control beyond the territories of the conquered Hausa, Nupe and Yoruba–Ilorin to the Tiv and other ethnic groups, whom the Fulani did not conquer, but had potentially attacked and harassed before the British colonial adventure. The resulting resentments from the disadvantaged political minorities and the abrasive dominance of the newly empowered ethnic groups fuelled the turbulence of southern politics. It also led to considerable turmoil in the North (Ezera 1957).
The genealogy of the ethnic minorities question in Nigeria is linked with three distinct histories. The first draws on the mode of evolution of Nigerian federalism and the emergent state system itself. The second has to do with the context of forced migration initiated by the British colonial hegemons in which populations across various parts of colonial Nigeria were taken to other regions to contribute to the construction of basic infrastructures such as hospitals, markets, railways, roads and schools under the system of forced unpaid labour. Following the completion of such tasks and the eventual termination of formal colonisation, although the victims of such forced migration have remained domiciled in the communities into which they were relocated, they and their descendants have neither been accepted nor recognised by members of the indigenous communities as legitimate co-heirs. The third history is tied to voluntary migration in which members of various ethnic groups move around the world in a quest for improved material conditions of living for themselves, their livestock and their dependants. Notwithstanding several decades of cohabitation in such communities, members of the immigrant populations have hardly been accepted by the hosts as belonging to the communities in which they have been based. Returning to their ancestral homelands is also not materially convenient.
Resolving these complications has been undermined by (i) the operations of indirect rule and the politics of preference accorded to the sons of the soil in local administration since the colonial period; (ii) the ideology of regionalism developed in the 1950s and 1960s that favours the citizens of one region over another; and (iii) the federal character principles introduced into the constitutions of the Second Republic (1979) and Fourth Republic (1999). These policies and practices have moved in the same direction for more than a century (Fourchard 2015, 40–41). As Claude Ake (1973) and Mahmood Mamdani (1996) have shown, colonialism was based on the entrenchment of near-absolute distinctions between the colonisers and the colonised. Transferring such distinctions into the operations of the postcolonial state thus rigidified historically fluid patterns of identity construction. To be sure, while the experience of the Hausa–Fulani migrant pastoralists in South-Western Nigeria bears mainly on voluntary migration, the shared experiences of other ethnic minorities across contemporary Nigeria trace their origins to the mode of evolution of Nigerian federalism and its associated contradictions.
In Africa, ethnic minority conflicts have often been animated by resource competition. This is mainly because ethno-territorial constituencies have been the key beneficiaries of state allocational decisions, especially since such sectionally based local or regional administrations constitute important agencies for distributing economic benefits; and also because rival sectional elites find it expedient to mobilise ethnic solidarities in their competition for power and privileges. Similarly, expanded material opportunities and socio-economic mobility facilitate the rise of new minority elites who are adeptly astute at giving corresponding expressions to communal grievances towards mobilising their communities in response to changing political situations (Arowosegbe 2009, 578–579). The major resource, for which such struggles have been most intense throughout Africa, is land. Although some efforts have been invested into accounting for the root causes of land and other resource-based conflicts across the continent (Bujra, Bush and Littlejohn 2011; Bernstein 2004), such efforts have hardly examined their connections with existing claims of belonging and the cultures of blood.
Land and resource competition in Africa
As a fundamental and highly symbolic resource, land holds a unique position within all African economies and societies. Much of the conflicts experienced in colonial and postcolonial Africa are linked with its summary expropriation from the peasantry by various authorities. Understanding the volatile dynamics between land, its competing usages and the ensuing – conflicting – claims to its access and control is however, not very straightforward. Examining land conflicts in Africa is particularly challenging as the contexts in which such conflicts take place are continuously changing, thus altering the complexities of the issues at dispute (Anseeuw 2005; Anseeuw and Allen 2010, 1–15). Yet, growth, sustainable development in Africa as well as the continent's overall contributions to the global political economy in the 21st century, will continue to depend largely on the manner in which land, land-based resources and land disputes are managed.1 The absence of systematic analyses on the status of land, on changes in land tenure systems as well as on the integration of these insights into post-conflict peace-building and state reconstruction strategies by various international, local and regional actors therefore constitutes a huge gap in the literature on land in Africa.
The problematic character of land as a source of conflicts has been widely acknowledged across Africa. Empirical studies and theoretical treatments of the land question as a problematic by-product of elite control in Africa have also been undertaken by scholars in other works. Between 1988 and 2000, a strip of sandy land on the Eritrean border was the source of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. This war claimed the lives of at least 70,000 civilians and combatants in the two countries (Bond 2009). The conflict in Darfur, Western Sudan, which began as a civil war in 1987–1989 between the Arab nomads and other ethnics, has been marked by intense ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate killing and massive slaughtering on both sides through unregulated land-grabbing (Mamdani 2009a, 2009b). In Zimbabwe, a constellation of ethnic and racial factors have found expression around the country's land question (Adejumobi and Momoh 2002, 245). Twenty years after Zimbabwe's independence, the land question has remained the most hotly contested policy reform arena in the country (Moyo 1995). Over six million people live in Zimbabwe's marginal rural lands without fertile soils and reliable rainfall, lacking control of water rights and restricted from access to the bulk of the country's natural resources (Moyo 1998). Just like Zimbabwe, the land question is also a major national issue in most of the countries in southern Africa (Moyo 2007).
Thus, while the escalation of conflicts over land and other land-based resources in Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria's Niger Delta region, Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa are copious illustrations of the numerous national struggles for access to land in those countries, such conflicts also underscore the perennial failure by both the elites and the state to successfully address the development and land questions across the continent. Consequently, ending postcolonial conflicts in Africa and reconstructing developmental states in their aftermath has attracted the attention of much international activism since the 1990s. In countries like Mozambique and South Africa, the transition from war to peace has resulted in tangible economic and social improvements in the lives of the communities and individuals. Yet, for most of the successes noted, there remain numerous instances in which peace still has only a tenuous grip on society, with conflict rapidly reasserting itself. The common denominator of those states which have succumbed to political violence has been the failure of post-conflict reconstructions to address the critical issue of land.
In Nigeria, struggles for the control and private ownership of land have often taken the forms of controversial legal manipulations by the elites. The increase in the control and private ownership of land has greatly accentuated interethnic polarisation, social inequalities and the number of landless people, particularly among the rural poor. These experiences have created scarcity and other distributive pressures for the land acquisition process. Aided by the corrupt and rent-seeking orientation of the elite at the federal level, these situations have also driven various ethnic, regional and religious communities into developing subnational conceptions of ethnic citizenship. They have therefore compounded the conflict profile of the state in Nigeria. This has been the case since the 1980s. From the 1980s, armed agitation by ethnic nationalities has been the familiar language of political expression in Nigeria (Adejumobi and Momoh 2002, 247). On 21 August 1987, a venomous exchange between a wealthy Hausa–Fulani settler and a Bachama youth wage labourer seeking work in Tingno-Waduku set the stage for a five-day exchange of hostilities between the Bachama and Hausa–Fulani in Tingno-Waduku, a village about 80 kilometres north-west of Numan in present-day Adamawa State. At the root of this conflict were disputed claims to the agricultural land in the area. Tingno-Waduku has been experiencing acute shortage of land following (i) heavy demands on the available land as a result of intense land alienation occasioned by large-scale farming; (ii) the emergent pattern of rural differentiation; and (iii) the presence of an influential community of Hausa–Fulani farmers and fishers, which created severe pressures on the available land and water resources in the area (Egwu 1999). Although the Hausa–Fulani population has now lived among the Bachama in Tingno-Waduku for more than 70 years, cleavages and identities have remained sharply divided along old ethnic and religious lines. The Hausa–Fulani settlers call the Bachama infidels, or unbelievers. The Bachama hosts also see the Hausa–Fulani through the same prism.
Following these provocative exchanges, the Bachama youth loudly chanted their traditional war cry, which attracted both Bachama and Hausa–Fulani folks from the nearest farms. Bachama fighters responded by capturing five Hausa–Fulani farmers who were subsequently held hostage in Waduku, the native section of the town inhabited mostly by the Bachama. On hearing the news, the Hausa–Fulani community confined mainly to Tingno attacked Waduku, ostensibly to free their ethnic kinsfolk unjustly held captive. In the counterattack that ensued, two Bachama leaders, including Chief Ndewode K. Kleru, the village titled chief, lost their lives. The following day ex-soldiers of Bachama descent in Waduku, who were mostly victims of the massive demobilisation from the Nigerian army after the civil war in 1970, moved into Tingno and launched a reprisal attack in an attempt to wipe out all the Hausa–Fulani settlers. Members of the two groups fought for three more days using automatic rifles, Dane guns – long-barrelled guns used mainly for hunting – and bows and arrows, leading to many deaths and the destruction of property. The conflict quickly spread and led to sporadic clashes in Fadama Gyakan, Tingno-Kogi, Rigange and other neighbouring villages. It took the intervention of a combined team of the Nigeria Police and a detachment of the Nigerian Army from Yola to restore law and order into these communities (Egwu 1999, 2).
In February 1992, a conflagration took place in Zangon-Kataf between the settler Hausa–Fulani community and the indigenous Kataf. This attracted the attention of government at the national level. At issue were allegations of discrimination against the Kataf by the Hausa–Fulani in the allocation of agricultural land, market stalls and other business opportunities in the Zangon-Kataf area of southern Kaduna, in present-day Kaduna State. The conflict in this area reached its climax on 15 June 1992 when the Kataf sparked off another two-day offensive against the Hausa–Fulani community after Friday Jumaat prayer service (Egwu 1999, 2). In the process, yam fields belonging to Kataf farmers were attacked, yam seedlings were uprooted, and properties were destroyed, while hundreds of Hausa–Fulani inhabitants of Zangon–Kataf origin were injured and killed. Artillery guns, bazooka rifles and other sophisticated weapons were freely used. The violence also spread to Ikara, Kaduna, Zaria and other major cities within the state. Such violent exchanges have also been recorded in Kafanchan, Kagoro and Lere in the state from this period onward. Although they have been linked with ethnic clashes and religious grievances, disputed access to economic resources, land and state power have been more central than what would appear to casual observers to be the root causes of such violence.
Colonial origins of the land-based conflicts in Nigeria
Referring to the antagonisms, contradictions and struggles generated by colonial and postcolonial policies which seek to redefine pre-capitalist customary regulations guiding access, control and ownership of land as a basis for preparing and presenting land for capitalist production, the land question has been wrongly assumed to be limited to former settler colonies in Africa. Algeria, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe have been widely cited as examples for justifying this position (CODESRIA 2004; Lentz 2006; Nyong'o 2013). Continent-wide studies of such conflicts – as in the case of South-Western Nigeria – have therefore not only been scanty, but devote more attention to the recent manifestations of the conflicts, thereby ignoring their colonial origins. Apart from the heavily biased accounts by local historians representing the belligerent communities, nuanced and objective analyses on the contributions of European Christian missionaries and merchant companies (such as John Holt and the Royal Niger Company in laying the foundations of the conflict) are yet to be made clear. With globalisation, structural adjustments and the intensification of identity politics, many of such conflicts have both expanded and lingered, thus compelling an examination of the historical roots of land alienation and expropriation in Africa (Onwuzuruigbo 2013, 130). Drawing on archival research conducted between October 2009, February 2010 and January and February 2013, as well as January to March 2015, this section speaks to the context of South-Western Nigeria.
Following the abolition of slave trade in the 1800s, the British encouraged trade in legitimate commodities throughout its colonies. It also empowered the Royal Niger Company to administer, levy customs, make treaties and trade throughout the areas around the basin of the Niger (Coleman 1958). The company moved into southern Nigeria and rapidly established several settlement areas there. In pursuance of its mandate, the Royal Niger Company acquired land, established trading outposts and promoted trade, especially in cocoa and palm produce. These developments had severe implications for the land question.
First, the concentration and focus on commercial and trading activities led to an unprecedented diversion from the production of food crops to cash crop production. This created an artificial scarcity and competition over land, leading to intensive land-grabbing by members of various ethnic groups. Lagos became a commercial gateway into other neighbouring Yoruba hinterland communities. The growth of commerce and trade also drew the attention and interest of other European trading companies such as the British John Holt and the French Compagnie Française de L'Afrique Occidentale, which rapidly established trading posts across the region for the purpose of participating in the booming trade in cocoa and palm produce. These were followed by European missionary organisations – notably the Roman Catholic Church and the Church Missionary Society – which set up bases in order to penetrate communities and settlements across the region and beyond. Importantly, unlike the trading companies, the missionaries were more interested in spreading Western cultural values through Christianising and educating the native populations.
Second, the agency of European merchant companies and missionaries brought about fundamental transformations in the populations and physical structures of southern Nigeria. Trade encouraged migration and rapid urbanisation in Ibadan, Lagos and other major cities across the region. Most of the migrants were local traders of European goods and servants of missionaries drawn from Hausa–Fulani migrant herdspeople from northern Nigeria as well as Nupe and Yoruba ethnic groups, who accompanied their European masters into southern Nigeria (Albert 1993; Osaghae 1994). By 1900, southern Nigeria had come under British colonial domination.
It should be noted that all the foreign companies, conglomerates and interests that converged in South-Western Nigeria demonstrated insatiable hunger for land. Although they had similar reasons – commerce, religion and trade – for migrating into this region, they were not united in their reasons for needing land. For example, colonial officials needed to usurp land ownership from the traditional institutions as a basis for consummating their sovereign authority over the local population. The missionaries wanted land for building churches and mission schools with which to propagate Christianity and other Western values across the region. European merchants needed land to eliminate local intermediary traders, establish trading outlets and access a direct supply of palm produce from the hinterlands. The local populations needed land for farming and habitation. All these groups expressed their demands in tones that prioritised the commercialisation and privatisation of land. Therefore, the more that new economic opportunities and pressures led to increased migration and changing patterns of production and trade, the more colonisers and colonised both struggled to position themselves advantageously with respect to the allocation and use of land and land-based resources (Berry 2002, 641). Land alienation, expressed in individual and state ownership of land, was the only way of achieving this end. Thus, contrary to the dictates of traditional practices, the commercialisation and privatisation of land was enforced by colonial administrators as the overriding principle of colonial land relations. Although the resistance to this policy position was brutally crushed by the colonial state, the resultant tensions – generated by the clashing of these conflicting notions as well as the contradictory frameworks of land ownership resulting therefrom and upheld by the postcolonial state – laid the foundations for the lingering land conflicts as well as land-based disputes across the country. Beyond Nigeria, this was much the case in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe (see Nyong'o 2013).
For example, for purposes of material upliftment, between 1855 and 1891, traditional rulers in Ogun State granted some portions of land in Sagamu, a metropolitan city in Ijebu Remo Local Government Area of Ogun State, to the Royal Niger Company, which built its trading shops on the land.2 In 1898, portions of land were sold to the same company in Ibarapa Central, Iseyin and Iwajowa Local Government Areas of Oyo State. While similar situations occurred across Lagos, Ondo and Osun States, each of the parties came into the land deal holding steadfastly to its own cherished notion of land ownership. Believing that land was a sellable property, the Europeans saw the deal as a perpetual transfer of ownership of the land to the company. Members of the local populations remained faithful to their traditional understanding of land as an inalienable, cultural asset. Members of these local populations thus saw the entire land deal as a temporary transfer of their ownership to their European guests – a right they thought they would reclaim with time and understanding. Unfortunately, by 1900, when the British colonial administration revoked the authority and powers of the Royal Niger Company, the Niger Lands Transfer Ordinance of 1916 facilitated the transfer of land titles of the Royal Niger Company to the colonial government. Section 2 of the Ordinance effectively transferred the entire portions of land sold to the Royal Niger Company to the governor of Nigeria. This meant that the land registered as No. 110 in the Register of Deeds and mentioned in the First Schedule of the Ordinance entirely became Crown land.3 This further led to different interpretations of the intention and provisions of the ordinance. Members of the local communities interpreted it as an invitation to exercise their hitherto suspended right of ownership of the land. Hausa–Fulani and other migrant populations artificially located in these areas understood the ordinance as providing a long-awaited opportunity to achieve a dream they had long nursed – a dream to claim part of the land owned by the state.
It should be noted that so many of these portions of the land under reference were left undeveloped and unoccupied by both the Royal Niger Company and later the colonial state, the reason being that the company committed itself ‘not to disturb present tenants or their heirs who may wish to continue in personal occupation of their lands and houses’ in the land agreement. For its part, the colonial government did not take effective possession of many such land portions after officially revoking the ownership right of the Royal Niger Company to the land. This constitutes the background to the inherited land-driven conflicts in postcolonial Nigeria. Land thus became the prima facie cynosure for members of the opposing ethnic groups. As indigenous Yoruba farmers embarked on chasing away Hausa–Fulani pastoralists from their areas, bitter and bloody struggles over land have ensued. In seeking to stop their ethnic Yoruba aggressors, Hausa–Fulani pastoralists have instituted several court actions. In the process, litigations and counter litigations have continued into the 1980s, most of them eliciting endless fatal clashes, thus undermining development and stability.4
Land-based conflicts in South-Western Nigeria
In South-Western Nigeria, disputed access to land by the natives and settlers has underlined a basis for violent conflicts among members of the two major ethnic groups in the region. To the Yoruba indigenes, the Hausa–Fulani in these areas are migrant settlers, who should neither own nor lay any claim to land rights in any part of their communities, a claim which the Hausa–Fulani see differently. The resulting tension created by the opposing frameworks and perceptions of land ownership among members of these groups is at the root of the violent conflicts experienced in the region, especially between 1999 and 2015. Violent ethnic conflicts driven mainly by land-based disputes have occurred among members of the Arogbo–Ijaw and Ilaje communities in Ondo State, in Ife–Modakeke in Osun State, and in Saki–Iseyin and the Hausa–Fulani in Oyo State within the period under review. Other areas include Ajegunle and Ketu Mile 12 within the Lagos metropolis, as well as Bodija in Oyo State. Between 1999 and 2015, a total of 21 violent ethnic clashes based on land disputes were recorded in Sagamu, a metropolitan city in Ijebu Remo Local Government Area of Ogun State.5 The conflict, which erupted in Sagamu in July 1999, not only had an ethno-religious character, but also had a spillover effect in January 2000 in Kano State. This spiral effect extended further into Ibadan in Oyo State, in April 2000, when Hausa–Fulani pastoralists killed a Yoruba man, after which an angry mob descended on Hausa–Fulani pastoralists in the Ibadan area and killed two beggars of Hausa–Fulani descent in Agbowo, a suburb directly opposite the gate of the University of Ibadan.6 On the third day of this gory incident, Kano city in northern Nigeria boiled over with yet another reprisal attack against members of the Yoruba community in the Sabon Gari area.
Various accounts exist on the number of violent conflicts between Hausa–Fulani pastoralists and Yoruba farmers in South-Western Nigeria. Between 1999 and 2015, the following numbers of violent conflicts were recorded in the following states: Ekiti 21; Lagos 24; Ogun 42; Ondo 21; Osun 15; and Oyo 41.7 The presence of Hausa–Fulani migrant pastoralists in this region dates back to the early 1950s. Then, there were no pronounced conflicts over land. The basic conflicts at this period were based on allegations by Yoruba farmers claiming damages from the vandalising of their farm produce by unguided cattle, and in relation to which the police were invited to mediate the enforcement and payment of compensation.8 The 1980s and 1990s, however, witnessed intense land-grabbing by members of the two ethnic groups. The significance of this period for our purpose should be underlined.
From the 1980s, recent patterns of conflict in Nigeria have forced a shift in focus to the problem of ethnicity, whose ubiquitous character now brings to the fore the frustrations experienced in the nation-building project (Egwu 1998). Furthermore, beyond Nigeria, the strong desire for nation building across postcolonial Africa has largely been a totalising state-centred project that has ignored significant processes of identity formation in the pre-colonial and colonial periods – fundamental processes – which are still of continuing relevance to nation building even today. Given the transitory nature of the period under reference – the 1980s and the 1990s – new constitutions, forms of political competition, ground rules, negotiated agreements, pacts and settlements are often manifest, and should be taken into account while seeking to understand and explain such conflicts. This is mainly because transitions are periods replete with crisis and turbulence, especially in Africa, and generate tensions and uncertainties through opening up new opportunities for political access and competition, for venting frustrations, grievances and also for seeking redress, thereby encouraging more desperate and intense political action (Osaghae 2004).
In Nigeria, the 1980s began with a civilian democratic regime but ended with the onset of a widespread economic crisis. During this period, the price of petroleum collapsed in the world market. Export earnings declined. The manufacturing sector experienced a rapid decline in capacity utilisation, while inflation rose dramatically (Mustapha 1992). The Nigerian economy entered into deep crisis. There was deindustrialisation, excessive pilfering of public resources and a dependence on the petty commodity sector for social reproduction. The social contract came under considerable stress while pressures for democratisation intensified. For our purpose, the combined impact of the resultant economic crisis as well as the adjustment introduced has been the intensification of existing hostilities over land and other scarce resources. This clearly informed the politicisation of ethnicity among members of the different ethnic groups.
As a regressive corollary, this period was characterised by many disruptive conflicts involving the use of many dangerous weapons. It also marked the emergence of the Oodua People's Congress in 1994 and other anti-robbery vigilante groups among the Yoruba communities in these states. Lastly, it informed (i) the building of formal diaspora associations and communities; (ii) the organisation of ethnic nationalities formations; and (iii) the appointment of traditional rulers by the Hausa–Fulani settlers in this region. These developments became understandable given the pronounced decline of state control – especially in the area of policing and security – which characterised the state in Africa from the post-Cold War period (Nolte 2007). These considerations not only underline the constitutional and structural constraints of the state in Nigeria as a notoriously complex and divided federation, but also underscore the importance of studying the connections between ethnicity and land-based conflicts during the period under review.
The development of alternative governance structures by the Hausa–Fulani settlers in South-Western Nigeria took place in 1995 after the first pronounced conflict between members of this group and their rival Yoruba counterparts. This took place sporadically between 1990 and 1992, during which Yoruba farmers attacked and killed 112 Hausa–Fulani pastoralists in the region. By 1995, representatives had been appointed at the local levels to represent members of the Hausa–Fulani communities. Thus, although ethnic conflicts have been on the scene since the 1980s, it has especially been the case since 1995 as well as the period marking the country's return to civilian rule in May 1999 – after 15 years of military rule – between 1984 and 1999.
Also by 1995, following the appeal by the appointed representatives, the Federal Government created what it called exclusive grazing zones for the Hausa–Fulani pastoralists in (i) Ajegunle in Ajeromi-Ifelodun Local Government Area of Lagos State; (ii) Igbo-Ora in Ibarapa Central Local Government Area of Oyo State; (iii) Gaa Salihu Igangan in Ibarapa North Local Government Area of Oyo State; and (iv) Waasinmi Aiyegun in Iwajowa Local Government Area of Oyo State. These areas have since been reserved for Hausa–Fulani pastoralists for growing abundant green vegetation, with which to meet the grazing needs of their livestock. The Federal Government, through the assistance of the World Bank, also provided a few boreholes in these communities. Containing very large expanses of land, these communities are surrounded by thick forests in which these pastoralists settle. Most of the boreholes have however dried up due to poor maintenance and the unmanageable pressures that result from the demand for water for both animal and human consumption in the areas. In addition, during most of the dry seasons, the green pastures within the grazing zones are exhausted. These situations press the pastoralists to expand beyond the grazing zones in search of green pasture and water for their livestock: the cattle owned and tended by the Hausa–Fulani destroy the crops before harvest, thus generating bloody clashes between the pastoralists and the Yoruba farmers who see the pastoralists mainly as vandals and accuse them of destroying their farm produce through the destructive presence of their livestock in their farms. There have also been allegations of robbery against these pastoralists by members of the host communities. Hausa–Fulani pastoralists are accused of working as pastoralists during the day and doubling as armed robbers at night. As anti-robbery attempts are directed at apprehending them, they accuse members of the Yoruba communities of victimising them based on their minority status in the areas. This has also led to conflicts as well as numerous deaths.
While there have been several violent exchanges between members of the two ethnic groups, such cases have however, rarely been formally charged in courts of law. Given what they describe as the unnecessary delay that accompanies the operations of the modern system of justice in the administration of disputes, members of these communities rather resort to ‘jungle justice’ through the deployment of self-adjudication and self-defence based on violent exchanges. Consequently, between 1999 and 2015, there have been only a few cases treated by the law courts on land-based conflicts in the region. Human lives and properties have, however, been lost in the process.
More than 5500 people of Hausa–Fulani descent have been killed by members of the Oodua People's Congress and other local vigilante groups in Oyo town and Saki in Oyo State, in 1999–2015.9 Within the same period, pastoral communities in Abeokuta North, Ado-Awaaye, Ajegunle, Eruwa, Gaa Kondo, Igbo-Ora, Ijebu Ode, Imeko, Ikenne, Iseyin, Mushin, Owode Egba, Oyo town, Saki, Sagamu, Sango-Ota, Waasinmi and Yewa North were hunted, pursued and sacked by members of the Oodua People's Congress, with more than 12,000 people of Hausa–Fulani descent killed and maimed. Properties have also been destroyed. The aim of the Oodua People's Congress was to eliminate all pastoral communities and abolish the idea of pastoralists settling in South-Western Nigeria.10
Although governments at the federal and state levels have repeatedly intervened to end these conflicts, not much has been achieved in the direction of development and peace. Peace and security committees have been commissioned at the local government levels. The attention of the police public relations committees in the six states has also been drawn to the need to be more communitarian in their interactions with citizens at the local levels. Other peace-mediating initiatives have similarly been created as a basis for spurring development, harmony and peace across these states. It has proved difficult, however, to resolve conflicts and disputes by peaceful means. All these tensions have underlined the problematic context of the citizenship question in the country.
Conclusion
This article has offered a reflection on the nature of the land and national questions in Nigeria. Drawing on primary data generated from observations, focused group discussions and oral interviews carried out between October 2009 and March 2015 across the locations with pronounced incidences of land-based conflicts in South-Western Nigeria, it examined the role of land as a source of conflicts from the period following the implementation of the structural adjustment programme in the country. As we have tried to show, the land question is a daunting challenge undermining nation building and state consolidation in Nigeria. This has especially been the case since 1999, the year marking the country's return to civil democratic politics, after 15 years of military dictatorship from 1984 to 1999. From this period, the country has been vexed by numerous violent conflicts; litigations on fiscal overcentralisation and a plethora of constitutional crises, among other pathologies, that underwrite the constitutional and structural constraints of Nigerian federalism (Suberu 2008). How are citizenship rights understood by the ordinary people across various rural communities in the country? How best might land redistribution and reforms be undertaken by the state in Nigeria? How do we transform ethnic and other forms of deference and devotion by the citizens into those of the state? These questions are central to the land and national questions in Nigeria. To be meaningful and sustainable in terms of their impacts, arguments, which focus on the democratic, federal and national questions in Nigeria, must be properly grounded in a conception of accountability and participation, which in the context of development actually strengthens and transforms the status of the citizens from one of abstract claimants to effective economic contributors and rightful beneficiaries of development on an inclusive and non–discriminatory basis.