Land governance is an important element of peace and security in the borderlands of northern Nigeria, to enable of animals to be moved peacefully between grazing areas and water points, and for herders and farmers to have access to land, through user rights or ownership. Deficiencies and irregularities in land governance, which includes the seizing of farmland and grazing land from local people by politicians, are contributing to insecurity.

This section dives deeper into how pastoralists organise and network to manage and move herds peacefully and productively in borderlands and across borders of northern Nigeria, and explores patterns of insecurity and response in selected borderland areas, based on field research. It is structured around the three main geographies of the fieldwork.

This section analyses different ways that insecurity manifests in relation to herders in the borderlands of northern Nigeria, looking at violent conflicts between farmers and herders and other communities, violent criminality, and armed insurgency.

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.

Transhumant herders in the borderlands of Nigeria and the Chad Basin

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.