The Moral Economy of the Agatu “Massacre”: Reterritorializing Farmer-Herder Relations

Abstract

The Agatu “Massacre” is a conflict between pastoralists and farmers in the Agatu area of Benue State, Nigeria. The conflict is significant because of the event’s gravity, but no scholarly inquiry that involves thoughtful and reflective methodological and theoretical approaches has been made. This paper investigates how the farmer-herder relations in Agatu became a violent crisis and situates it within relevant literature to fill gaps in farmer-herder conflicts literature in Africa. Existing literature demonstrates the pertinence of moral economies for resource use, spatial pattern, and manifestations of conflicts in developing and developed worlds. However, studies have yet to use the moral economy concept to explore the African farmer-herder conflicts from a political ecology perspective. This paper demonstrates that the Agatu crisis emerged due to reterritorializations in the moral economy of farmers and herders, disrupting their social ties. It further illustrates that the violence in Agatu was caused by the deviation from the traditional approach to addressing the damage done to crops by herding livestock. Nevertheless, the paper argues that this deviation is the consequence of modifications in the moral economy of farmers and herders driven by the aspiration for financial gain rather than the subsistence of agro-pastoral relations. The paper argues that changes in moral economies can disrupt social relations and lead to farmer-herder conflicts, leading to the exclusion of pastoralists from resource access through policy and legislation.

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Vol.:(0123456789)
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Society (2023) 60:359–371
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00860-x
(IM)MOBILITIES, SECURITY ANDIDENTITIES INWEST AFRICA BORDERLANDS
The Moral Economy oftheAgatu “Massacre”: Reterritorializing
Farmer‑Herder Relations
CletusFamousNwankwo1,2
Accepted: 16 May 2023 / Published online: 6 June 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023
Abstract
The Agatu “Massacre” is a conflict between pastoralists and farmers in the Agatu area of Benue State, Nigeria. The conflict
is significant because of the event’s gravity, but no scholarly inquiry that involves thoughtful and reflective methodologi-
cal and theoretical approaches has been made. This paper investigates how the farmer-herder relations in Agatu became
a violent crisis and situates it within relevant literature to fill gaps in farmer-herder conflicts literature in Africa. Existing
literature demonstrates the pertinence of moral economies for resource use, spatial pattern, and manifestations of conflicts
in developing and developed worlds. However, studies have yet to use the moral economy concept to explore the African
farmer-herder conflicts from a political ecology perspective. This paper demonstrates that the Agatu crisis emerged due to
reterritorializations in the moral economy of farmers and herders, disrupting their social ties. It further illustrates that the
violence in Agatu was caused by the deviation from the traditional approach to addressing the damage done to crops by herd-
ing livestock. Nevertheless, the paper argues that this deviation is the consequence of modifications in the moral economy
of farmers and herders driven by the aspiration for financial gain rather than the subsistence of agro-pastoral relations. The
paper argues that changes in moral economies can disrupt social relations and lead to farmer-herder conflicts, leading to the
exclusion of pastoralists from resource access through policy and legislation.
Keywords Agatu “Massacre”· Farmer-herder conflict· Moral economy· Political ecology· Reterritorialization
Introduction
The Agatu “Massacre” is a conflict between native Idoma
farmers and the Fulani herders in the Agatu local govern-
ment area (LGA) of Benue State in Nigeria. The crisis began
in 2012, leading to the heaviest battle in 2016, dubbed the
Agatu “Massacre” (Mayah, 2016). The Agatu crisis began in
Akpeko in the Ocholoyan village of Okokolo ward and even-
tually spread throughout the Agatu LGA. The Idoma farmers
claim that the Fulani pastoralists aim to take over Agatu,
especially the riverine villages such as Obagaji, Adagbo,
Akwu, Odugbehon, Aila, Okokolo, and Odejo, due to their
fertile land and freshwater suitable for agro-pastoral produc-
tion (Mayah, 2016). However, the Fulani herders stated that
the Agatu people were wrong and pretended to be victims.
The conflict escalated when an Agatu and Tiv militia group
killed a Fulani herder named Sehu Abdullahi and stole over
200 cattle (Mayah, 2016). Despite the murder, no serious
action was taken by the police or government. The herders
indicated that theconflict intensified when the Agatu mili-
tia beheaded a well-known Fulani leader named Madaki.
Madaki attended a meeting to resolve issues surrounding the
death of Sehu Abdullahi and the damage his cattle inflicted
on crops (Mayah, 2016). His death provoked the Fulani
people, which resulted in a crisis involving killings and the
destruction of property. A report indicates 3920 people died
from the conflict between 2013 and 2017, and 2000 died in
internally displaced person camps (Duru, 2017). Exploring
the nature and dynamics of this conflict can contribute to the
literature on farmer-herder conflicts in Africa.
Although the media reports offer some background infor-
mation about the crisis, serious scholarly research on the
conflict that involves thoughtful and reflective methodo-
logical and theoretical approaches has not been conducted.
The research examines the nature of the Agatu massacre to
understand how the farmer-herder conflict in Agatu became
* Cletus Famous Nwankwo
cfn5@leicester.ac.uk
1 School ofGeography, Geology andtheEnvironment,
University ofLeicester, Leicester, England
2 Department ofGeography, University ofNigeria, Nsukka,
Nigeria
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