Farmer-Herder Conflicts as a Clash of Ontologies in North-Central Nigeria

Abstract

The paper understands the farmer-herder clashes in the North-Central Nigeria as a type of ethno-religious conflict. Given the role of the cattle and the farmland to the material survival of the herder and the farmer, discourses on these clashes have been dominated by the perception that they are struggles for material survival couched in religious garb. That is, these clashes have been interpreted, largely, as a struggle for survival.  However, the distinct point this essay highlights is that, the clashes are not just motivated by the inevitability of material survival. Rather, the conflicts are fundamentally a clash of ontologies (worldviews). To properly establish this point, the essay will show that: (i) the ontology of the Muslim Fulani Herder is fundamentally different from that of the rural farmers in North-Central Nigeria (ii) a major area where this clash of ontology operates is in the centrality of land among the communities of North-Central Nigeria; (iii) and the clash is further exacerbated by the fact that both ontologies are seemingly incommensurable. The paper adopts hermeneutics and phenomenology as methods. That is, the essay interprets cultural practices and oral lore in other to describe the essence of both groups.