The Politics of Settler/Indigene Conflicts in Benue and Taraba States

The Politics of Settler/Indigene Conflicts in Benue and Taraba States

ABSTRACT

The study, the politics of settler/indigene conflicts in Benue and Taraba States of Nigeria seeks knowledge from primary research to answer to the need to break down the endless cycles of violence across Nigeria, The search for answers to understand of a new dimension of identity conflicts – what does one make of a conflict in both rural and urban settlements about claims to territorial possession on the platform of ethnic identity with the volatility of even ethnic cleansing? To date very little is known about the malignancy of this form of conflict that is extremely violent: pitting kinship ties against citizenship and resonating sometimes with religion and politics. It is for this reasons that the study seeks to explain with primary data the causes of the conflicts, to examine the ideological platforms and the role of politics in settler/indigene conflicts; and to understand the relationship between claims to land, ethnic ideology and politics and how they either cause or escalate the conflicts. In doing these, the study adopted pluralism as a theoretical guide within a political economy approach. Qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were adopted in a research design meant to complement both aspects of Research. The data collected with triangulation techniques was carefully analyzed and the following findings were arrived at – the conflicts appear to be motivated by issues that polarize around economic opportunities such as land ownership and political power; they strongly suggest a struggle for dominance first between fractions of the same class- namely, richer peasants using ethnic platforms for mobilization on causes that benefit them, and secondly, between a rentier state using power to wrestle control of the means of production from the peasant commodity producers at the marketing stage of production; that in the confrontation between social and cultural pluralism (kinship ties or ethnicity) and social pluralism (citizenship ), it is the former that dominates social reality in these conflicts and serves to explain the potency and volatility of the eruptions. In the mutating settler/indigene conflicts, the ruling elites seek hegemony through the use of ethnic ideology anchored to land ownership to dominate the production arena. The study concludes with some candid observations that only genuine democracy and true governance can create conducive conditions that will make such ideological constructions such as settler/indigene platforms less potent.

The Politics of Settler/Indigene Conflicts in Benue and Taraba States

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