RETURN TO IGBOLAND: GEOGRAPHICAL REALITY CHECK FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF NIGERIA’S PASTORAL CRISIS

Abstract

Nigeria faces a pastoral crisis – what to do with the herdsmen’s transhumance in an era of modernity and shrinkage of pastoral resources under climate change. The herdsmen struggle to displace settled people around areas of their forays. The pastoral challenge concerns land ownership and exercise of landuse rights among populations in the conflict theaters. This has proved very costly in terms of loss of lives and properties. Igboland has for long been enmeshed in this crisis involving Fulani herdsmen in apparent occupational insurgency. This study tries to understand the role of emigration of Igbo people from their homeland in southern Nigeria in growing attractiveness of the area to debilitating external pastoral designs. It posits that return to the homeland relocation and development of investments is a bulwark against undesirable land-grabbing in Igboland by external pastoral interests. The argument is put forward that land grabbing characterizing legislative and non-conventional land appropriation efforts for alien pastoral enterprise in Igboland are largely a function of apparent vacuum in the engagement of the Igboland space. The paper interrogates the idea that transhumance thrives on a romanticized open field ideal while it is challenged by physical barricades. Underdevelopment and high green index that follows dereliction indicate cattle survival and stock navigability potentials. The paper relies on analysis of the geography of pastoral conflicts across Nigeria and the argument of ‘Topomorphic Revolution’ to conclude that beyond failed efforts to push away invading herdsmen, effective occupation, return of absentee landlords, the rise of fences and barricades, development of derelict plots, planning of new layouts, create greater disincentives to externally originated herdsmen across Igboland.