Nigeria — Transhumance Tracking Tool Report — Early Warning Systems Dashboard 2 (February 2022)

Farmers and herders communities in Nigeria have historically lived in a peaceful relationship that developed through mutual support. However, tensions have grown over the past decade with reports of violent clashes becoming more frequent. In recent years, disputes over crop damage, livestock theft, and water pollution have increasingly turned violent. 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 conflicts resolving mechanism and climate change.

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. A network of Key informants selected from members of the Community Response Network ( and LGA based team leads were used for data collection.

During the month of February 2022 the TTT Early Warning tool captured 187 alerts. The triangulated alerts includes 125 (67%) events and 62 (33%) massive/sudden movements. The event alerts spread across 54 per cent of the wards in the 5 operational LGAs Borrong and Demsa wards located in Demsa LGA 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 and non-use of official transhumance corridors. 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 Madagali, Maiha, Fufore, Hong, Jada, Ganye and Yola South LGAs. These are important watch out areas to closely follow up and report early and massive movements of transhumance to mitigate potential agro-pastoral conflicts.