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Paper short abstract:

Relying on archival sources, focus groups, interviews and secondary sources, this paper interrogates how land policies were used to appropriate land to certain families and individuals which created animosity, worsened food insecurity and generated conflicts in Jos Plateau.

Paper long abstract:

The people of Jos Plateau resisted and fought the British longer than any group in Northern Nigeria to keep their land. Land occupies a central position in African societies. Not only is land critical for agricultural production it also represents a sacred force binding the living and the dead. It is a symbol of connection and disconnection. Land is a jointly owned and shared asset among families, clans, kinsmen and communities which cannot be sold. However, with the gradual imposition of colonial rule in many parts of the emerging Nigerian state in the late nineteenth century and the stream of changes accompanying it, this notion of land began to undergo radical transformation including becoming a resource for economic accumulation for some Africans. Apart from intensifying struggles for land ownership and control, colonial land and administrative policies provided impetus for the expropriation of large expanse of indigenous farmers' land in Jos Plateau to certain Fulani and Hausa families. This trajectory of land administration in turn stimulated conflicts that has manifested in the post-colonial state as farmer/herder clashes, raised food security and cattle grazing questions and remained intractable. Scholarly analysis of land and land rights as the driver towards violence in Jos have neglected this dimension. Relying on archival sources, focus groups, interviews and secondary sources, this paper interrogates how land policies were used to appropriate land to certain families and individuals which created animosity, worsened food insecurity and generated conflicts in Jos Plateau.