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Determinants of Herdsmen-Crop-Farmers Conflicts and Proposals for Mitigating the Effects in Oyo State, Southwest, Nigeria.

. Professor Oladosu, Ismail O, Professor Ayanwuyi, Emmanuel and Professor Gbadegesin Sulaiman A


Abstract

The consequences of migration to a resource limited location brings about increasing pressure on such resources, therefore migrating groups such as herders often trigger ethnic conflicts when they move to new areas to compete for limited ecological resources. The aim of the research outlined in this paper was to study the pre-disposing conflict factors between herdsmen and crop farmers and mitigation options. The Survey Sampling techniques adopted included Cluster and multistage sampling techniques for selecting respondents for the study. Snowball sampling was also used due to the large number of herdsmen residing (some illegally) in the area which may not encourage systematic random sampling. Data analyses were done using weighted mean scores (wms) for data summarization, while Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation analysis was applied to determine the effects of farm invasion by herders on selected socio-economic factors.

The results revealed that conflict is precipitated by herders either deliberately or carelessly allowing their animals to feed on crops growing on farms, feeding crops stored in barns or cribs to cattle, rape and sexual harassment and water pollution by the animals drinking from usually the community’s main source of water. It was also established that age, farm size; labour size, faming experience, average income from vegetables and average income from other farm enterprises had positive significant relationship (at 5%) with number of times farmers’ farms were invaded.

Keywords: Conflict, Eco-violence, Herders, Crop Farmers

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