Desertification-Induced Resource Scarcity and Intensifying Pastoral-Farmer Conflicts in Nigeria's Middle Belt

Attah Siyaka Musa

doi:10.56201/rjhcs.v12.no6.2026.pg37.44

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Desertification-Induced Resource Scarcity and Intensifying Pastoral-Farmer Conflicts in Nigeria's Middle Belt

Attah Siyaka Musa

Abstract

Northern Nigeria's advancing desertification and increasingly erratic rainfall have steadily eroded pasture and water availability, compelling pastoralist communities to migrate southward into the Middle Belt in search of grazing corridors and watering points. This southward drift has collided with an equally expanding agrarian frontier, producing a pattern of conflict that has grown deadlier, more protracted, and more difficult to resolve through customary mechanisms alone. While a considerable body of scholarship treats farmer-herder violence as a function of ethnicity, religion, or elite manipulation, comparatively little sustained attention has been paid to the specific ecological chain running from desertification and rainfall variability, through pasture and water scarcity, to organised violent contestation in Middle Belt states such as Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, Taraba, and Kaduna. This article addresses that gap by tracing the causal pathway linking climatic stress in the Sahelian north to conflict intensification in the Middle Belt, drawing on Homer-Dixon's environmental scarcity theory as its guiding framework. Using a qualitative, document-based methodology that synthesises secondary literature, conflict- tracking data, and climatic reports, the article finds that resource scarcity functions less as a standalone trigger than as a multiplier that interacts with weak land governance, demographic pressure, and proliferation of small arms to intensify violence. The article concludes that durable peace in the Middle Belt requires ecological and climate-adaptive interventions alongside the political and security measures that currently dominate policy responses.

Keywords

desertificationrainfall variabilityresource scarcitypastoral-farmer conflictMiddle Belt

References

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Desertification-Induced Resource Scarcity and Intensifying Pastoral-Farmer Conflicts in Nigeria's Middle Belt

Abstract

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