This section looks at causes and manifestations of insecurity and violence affecting and involving herder communities in the borderlands and across borders in northern Nigeria.
Research for this study was carried out through fieldwork in pastoral and farming communities in the borderlands of northern Nigeria – in pastoral camps and in locations along the routes that herders follow during transhumance and migration. Fieldwork was conducted at intervals between 2020 and 2023, beginning with scoping studies and then progressing to longer periods in the field that were spent visiting pastoral camps and villages and doing individual and group interviews.
Rainfall in Turkana and Karamoja is, and has long been, very low and highly variable from year to year and place to place. There is no month in either territory when rainfall exceeds evaporation potential. Its scarcity and variability are the reasons why pastoralism is the dominant mode of production here and it is why agreements to share access to grazing and water between different territories and in safety are so important.
The pastoralists’ research journey has taken us from the terrors and bitterness of the violence that hurts everyone in the society, into the spaces where it is inside the system of governance. Half of the community research was in the communities’ own places, working out how to articulate the complex interactions of the insecurity and the community’s part in failing to solve it. The other half was in the policy space, asking why the problems persist, and what is the way forward.
In this section we turn to the arena of politics and policy, including the multiple actors and powers operating at and between different levels of the state hierarchy. It is an arena of formal and informal engagements and institutions where law, order, rights, investment, and accountability are navigated and argued over between different interests, between the two countries, and between the different levels of the administration. The pastoralists of Karamoja and Turkana do not have easy access to this space, yet community researchers argue that the problem of insecurity plays out here.
"Until the government understands why people need to have guns, they will continue focusing on conflict, which is the wrong side to solve this insecurity. Even after the disarmament, theft did not stop. Arrows and eventually the gun re-emerged. Let us focus more on the criminal." - Karamoja official
Community action research works because those who are affected by an issue are at the centre of decisions about how it is researched (Bryden Miller et al., 2003). When done well, it generates trustworthy, useful and relevant findings which often are contribute to improving relationships in a society, political system or organisation (Bradbury and Reason, 2001). The rationale is that the questions and findings generate workable solutions because those who are embroiled in an issue take a step back and apply informed logic to its analysis (Greenwood and Levin, 2007).
