Perceptional Analysis: Effectiveness of Traditional Institutions in Farmer-herder Conflicts Management in Borno State, Nigeria

The study was conducted to assess the perception of the effectiveness of traditional institutions in Farmer-Herder conflicts management in three selected Local Government Areas (Damboa, Jere and Magumeri LGAs) of Borno state, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 225 sample size respondents which include farmers (150) and herders (75) respectively. A structured questionnaire was used in 3-points Likert scale to collect data for this study which was analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage). The results revealed thaton the average, majority (68.9%) of the farmers perceived the performance of the traditional institutions in arbitration of conflict between farmers and herders to be effective. Whereby, the ability of the traditional arbitrators to restore peace after their resolutions (76%) was the first reason for rating the performance of the traditional institutions as effective by the herders. However, the study recommend that the traditional institutions should be strengthened through constitutional amendment, thus, to return their power to adjudicate conflict in the rural areas which had been taken away by the 1976 Local Government Reform.