Ethnic Tensions are Exacerbating Resource Conflicts in the Sahel

The Sahel―this includes parts of Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Chad, Eritrea, Cameroon, Eritrea, and Sudan―is one of the world’s most deserted and conflict-ridden regions with millions of Sahelians displaced and in need of humanitarian assistance due to widespread poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, climate change, and natural resource conflicts. Nigeria is the most populous state in the region and, as the International Crisis Group (ICG) have noted, farmer-pastoralist conflict in the country produced death tolls that are sometimes comparable to the ongoing war on terror against Boko Haram and the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) in the Lake Chad Basin. I argue that ethnic fears―the fear of ethnic domination―are exacerbating resource conflicts in the region as different ethnic groups distrust policy interventions that could stoke the conflicts: such ethnic fears have rendered resource conflicts in the region intractable.

The Blind Spot of the Seemingly ‘Intractable’ Conflicts

The extant literature on farmer-pastoralist conflict in the Sahel tends to be fixated on its causes or sources. Theoretical frameworks deployed to explain the farmer-pastoralist conflict typically include environmental scarcity and political ecological factors such as inequitable land allocation, political corruption, and questions of belonging (indigeneity and autochthony). Whilst these obviously aid us to comprehend the roots of the conflict, they do not proceed to explicate why the conflict has seemingly become intractable. In my article, I depart from such obsessions with causal factors and turn instead toward the conflict’s persistence despite state policy interventions to curb it. Hence, beyond scholarly narratives that propose solutions based on environmental abundance, land reallocation, and the interdiction of autochthony as a political category, I contend that ontological insecurity amongst different ethnic groups is a critical factor that explains the intractability of the conflict.

Ontological Security as a Conceptual Framework

I understand ontological security―the conceptual framework that I utilise in the article―as the security of identity devoid of disruptions or threats. Groups typically want to preserve their ethnoreligious identities so that state policies that seemingly threaten a group’s identity are unlikely to be accepted. Although ontological security was first used in psychology and sociology, it was imported into political science by critical International Relations (IR) scholars who were utterly dissatisfied with the disproportionate focus of realists and neorealists on power politics and physical security amongst states in an anarchical international system. For ontological security theorists states care not only about physical security but also ontological security―that is the security of identity. In the article, I adapt the theory to the group level rather than the state and international levels in order to see show how ontological security works beyond the latter levels of analysis.

The Case of Nigeria

Nigeria is a deeply divided state: there are deep animus along ethnic, religious, and regional lines since its independence in 1960. Such group animosities engendered the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) which, until today, is the subject of controversy that breeds ethnic hatred. There is widespread scholarly consensus that northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim whilst southern Nigeria is mainly Christian. Further, land for several groups in the federation symbolise cultural identity, loss of which means the abrogation of a group’s collective identity. When the federal government proposed in 2019 to resolve the farmer-pastoralist conflict by sedentarising Fulani pastoralists most of whom are northern Muslims, this policy was fiercely resisted by other groups in southern Nigeria. The policy was ultimately discarded in large part because non-Fulani ethnoreligious groups perceived it as a strategy by the federal government to enable pastoralists to dominate and change the ethnic and religious identities of southern Nigerians. Consequently, despite the policy’s ostensibly good intentions of halting the incessant conflicts between farmers and pastoralists, it was rejected neither because of environmental scarcity (there is abundant land) nor because of political ecology (inequitable allocation of land or political corruption) but as a consequence of the fear of ethnic domination. Southern groups viewed the policy with suspicion, that is, as a threat to the security of their cultural and religious identities. This is precisely why they argued that the policy aimed to ‘Islamise’ and ‘Fulanise’ southerners.

Mutual Security-Seeking Strategies as a Prerequisite for Restoring Peace

What the Nigerian case demonstrates is, I think, that we must move beyond the causes or sources of natural resource conflicts in the bedevilled Sahel and instead interrogate the reasons for their persistence despite resource abundance. Analysing the farmer-pastoralist conflict in the region this way would leave us with important cues about why it has remained intractable. Ontological insecurity might not be the causal factor in the resource conflicts in the Sahel, but it certainly plays a significant albeit neglected role in sustaining the brawls as groups reject policies that could benefit them for the sole purpose of security of identity. Accordingly, to restore peace in the region, scholars and policymakers have a big role to play by engaging in negotiations that break down inflexible attachments to demonising narratives and support mutual security-seeking amongst various ethnoreligious groups.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Promise Frank Ejiofor is a doctoral student in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge. He holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and an MA in Political Science from Central European University (CEU) in Austria. His research interests lie at the intersections of nationalism, citizenship, ethnic politics, and international security.