Nigeria — Transhumance Tracking Tool Report — Early Warning Dashboard 3 (March 2022)

In Nigeria, the conflict between farmers and herders, which emanate from competing claims to natural resources is compounded as a result of factors such as population growth, expanding human settlements, land privatization, year-round farming, environmental degradation, weakened traditional conflict resolving mechanism and climate change. The Transhumance Tracking Tool (TTT) collects key data on transhumance in Adamawa state, with the aim of providing information related to the internal and cross-border movements along the official and unofficial corridors.

The TTT Early Warning identifies pattern of alerts related to the use of natural resources, agro-pastoral practices and herders’ movements that is linked to events or massive/unexpected movement of livestock that could cause a conflict. It also helps understand the modes of resolution of conflicts and inform the competent authorities in order to reduce tensions or prevent conflict. A network of Key informants selected from members of the Community Response Network (CRN) and LGA-based team leads were used for data collection.

During the month of March 2022, the TTT Early Warning tool captured 262 alerts. The triangulated alerts include 218 (83%) events and 44 (17%) massive/sudden movements. The event alerts spread across 79 per cent of the wards in the 5 operational LGAs. Kodomti and Borrong wards located in Numan and Demsa LGAs respectively, share the highest number of recorded event alerts. This was primarily attributed to early or late passage of pastoral groups, damage in surrounding fields by pastoral groups, non-use of official transhumance corridors and competition around animal resources. Furthermore, key informants indicated that several localities outside of the TTT's operational areas, which frequently are subject to tensions between herders and farmers, might witness incidents, including Hong, Jada, Shelleng and Yola North LGAs. These presents an important early warning opportunity of monitoring events that are related to early or massive movements of transhumance and to mitigate potential farmers-herders’ conflicts in these locations.