A tale of two communities: Who owns the land? community safety, peace process and land ownership in tiv/jukun communitie
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A tale of two communities: Who owns the land? community safety, peace process and land ownership in tiv/jukun communities of Taraba State, Nigeria Seun Bamidele
Accepted: 8 November 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The study focuses on community crimes and insecurity challenges in Tiv and Jukun communities of Taraba State, Nigeria. The history of the two communities and the land-owner groups is laced with aggressions and grievances, which have resulted in crimes at various times. The last one, from January to July 2019, witnessed massive deaths, destruction of lives and property and led to forced displacement of persons. Quite a number of works have emerged on the causes and consequences of community land ownership-related crimes. However, the aftermath of community peace agreements, particularly in respect of tensed relations, community protection and safety in the area is yet to be sufficiently interrogated. This study investigates the state of relations between the Tiv and Jukun as well as the community peace processes in the area after the last inter-communal clashes. Also, it identifies a number of factors causing inter-communal-clashes between the two. Furthermore, the study also reveals complex community protection, safety, and peace processes involving the state, community, land owners, community leaders and land ownership gangs. Specifically, at the moment, the peace in the communities is sustained by the leaders of the gangs. This study answers the
S. Bamidele (&) Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected]
following questions: How sustainable is this arrangement? What is the state of relations in the communities? What roles do the actors play? The study made use of both primary and secondary data. Fieldwork for the study was carried out between August and September 2019 in Tiv and Jukun communities of Taraba State. The main method of data collection was unstructured interview, which was conducted with 150 people, made up of all traditional rulers, local, political, religious and youth leaders. Secondary data was sourced from texts, newspapers, magazines, official gazettes, archival materials and the Internet. Keywords Tiv Jukun Crimes Community leaders Land ownership gangs Community peace process Nigeria
Introduction Land, in African sociocultural spaces, especially in Nigeria, hold a significant implication and value, which is why it is traceable to diverse forms of conflicts. Some of these conflicts, sadly have transcended from the early post-colonial times. The caveat that land crises are notorious in boundary communities is at the centre of this research, which aims at mirroring the bitter-aggressive relationship between communities, whose source of conflicts has always been tied to cleavage to land as an inheritance or by
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dint of historic or political rights. The implication here is that, in many
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