Between development and dispossession: Understanding why there is weak collective resistance to large-scale land acquisitions in Nasarawa South,Nigeria

Abstract

In recent years, subsistence farmers and pastoralists in Benue Valley villages in Nasarawa South, Nigeria, have lost access to wetlands because of their acquisition by large-scale agro-industrial projects. The paper employs political ecology and political opportunity theories and uses in-depth interviews to examine the dynamics of resistance to the wetland acquisitions. It shows that the large-scale appropriation of lands in villages in the study area has led to loss of land access, pollution of land, and displacement of farmers and herders. We argue that despite their impacts, these acquisitions typically face no strong collective resistance because of the local perception of these projects as “bringing development” to local communities that have overshadowed any critiques of such project impacts, including inadequate compensation for the acquired lands. However, if a local community perceives that it is targeted for displacement, perhaps because only the lands of its members are marked for acquisition among diverse groups, it may afford less importance to the development discourse, prompting collective action against the acquisition. We argue that these findings can be useful to debates about when and how discourses become critical factors shaping resistance dynamics in multi-ethnic agrarian settings.