Ethnic minorities and the land question in Nigeria

One of the most neglected aspects of the national question discourse in Nigeria is on the role of land as a site and source of conflicts, especially given the increasing demand for its redistribution and reform in the periods before and after the implementation of the structural adjustment programme. This study discusses land as a crucial aspect of the national question discourse in Nigeria. It examines the question of how colonialism – through its policies and programmes as well as the administrative structures and political systems put in place by the colonial state – introduced new complications and dimensions to the land question, mainly through the creation and development of contradictions in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. Drawing on data generated from focus group discussions and oral interviews carried out across the locations with pronounced incidences of land-based conflicts in the six states across South-Western Nigeria, it examines the impact of economic considerations in the ethnically motivated conflicts in Nigeria over land from 1999 to 2015. It establishes the contradictions and injustices characterising the articulation of the citizenship question vis-à-vis various ethnic majorities and minorities as well as historically dominant minorities, especially indigenes and settlers in Nigerian history and politics; and how these generate violent ethnic protests, struggles and other divisive consequences. Tapping into ethnicity, migration and other issues underlying intergroup polarisation, it discusses the conflicts between Hausa–Fulani pastoralists and indigenous Yoruba farmers in South-Western Nigeria as an illustration of the contradictions underpinning citizenship and the prevailing frameworks of land ownership in Africa.