Introduction

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Nigeria and The World Bank (FMARD & World Bank, 2020) stated that Nigeria’s livestock population includes 22,378,374 Cattle; spread across the six geopolitical zones of the country. The ecology in the northern part of the country makes it famous for livestock keeping for both small and large ruminants; such that, in Sokoto state, the livestock population was estimated to be 3 million cattle, 3 million sheep, 5 million goats, 4,600 camels, 52,000 donkeys and host of other species of local and exotic poultry species (Mamman, 2005; MOCIT, 2002). National Bureau of Statistics/ Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (2010/2011) reported that Sokoto state has 85,993 cattle, 114,064 goats, and 97,682 Sheep. Sokoto State Ministry of Agriculture (2022) stated that Sokoto state leads in terms of livestock production, with a livestock population of over 3.5 million cattle, 2.5 million sheep, and over 4,000,273 goats. A tsetse-fly-free zone, which favors the production of livestock, makes Sokoto State one of the highest livestock-producing states in Nigeria. Nzaberinda et al. (2021) show that expansion in the agricultural area in Nigeria between 1992 and 2015 was by far the highest in Africa such that, many traditional stock routes used for grazing, have been cultivated (Knauer et al., 2017). In northern Nigeria, the overwhelming majority of rural dwellers engage in agriculture-based livelihoods (Ibrahim & Ahmad, 2013) with their well-being largely based on the stability of crop and livestock production.

Transhumance pastoralism involves the seasonal movement of livestock between different agroecological zones to explore grazing resources; thus, transhumance pastoralism is a cultural adaptation strategy in response to climate change. Timpong-Jones et al (2023) noted that transhumance is the major pastoral system in West Africa, which involves movement from agroecology areas with limited all-year-round available pasture resources towards areas with available pasture and water resources. The movements are influenced by the onset of rain within the country, cross-border transhumance from arid-Sahelian to coastal areas, and return from the coastal countries back to arid areas, due to the commencement of the rains in the coastal countries.

The propensity of transhumance to generate tension and catalyze inter-communal violence leading to ancestral, intractable conflicts according to the United Nations (2020) are socio-economic shifting patterns, climate change, increased instability and violence, and breakdown of formal and informal regulating mechanisms. Closely related to the concept of transhumance pastoralism is adverse possession, often described as ‘squatter’s rights’, which is the process by which “a person who does not have legal title to the land, can become the legal owner by possessing the land for a specified period of time”. This is a classical case of a settler claiming ownership after several years of informal occupancy which has often led to conflicts.

Nigeria has experienced the highest number of farmer-herder fatalities over the past decade with an increasing trend of 2,000 deaths recorded in 2018. The north-western, Middle Belt, and southern states have been reported recently as the epicenter of violent events between pastoralists and farming communities in Nigeria. Resource supply and demand-induced and structural scarcities act singly or in combination to promote scarcities of cropland, water, and associated resources. Migrations, productivity losses, and rent-seeking of elites generated social segmentation that deepened group-identity conflict. “Policies that effectively reduce the grazing land available to seminomadic pastoralists may also inadvertently fuel cycles of violence.” These have led to increasing conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in the northern and central states of Nigeria, with multiple deaths (Sambo, 2021; Krätli & Toulmin, 2020). Drought and desertification, increase the likelihood of farmer-herder conflict competition for scarce resources intensifies (George et al., 2021, 2022; Lenshie et al., 2020).

Krätli and Toulmin (2020) reported that between 2019 and 2020, Nigeria recorded 1,421 incidents with 4,168 fatalities of farmer-herder conflict. United Nations (2020) noted that in Central Nigeria, from 2009 to 2019, over 10,000 people were killed in clashes between herders and farmers. The north-central states of Nigeria reported 380 deaths from a series of attacks in the first half of 2016 (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, 2023). All Africa (2023) reported the killing of 5,138 people within 87 months due to armed invasions in 78 percent of the areas of Benue state with 1,986 killings between 2015 and 2016. Figures 1 and 2 depict the distribution of cattle rustling, transit routes, associated armed groups, and death rates from conflict and terrorism which are regularly associated with farmers-herders conflict in Nigeria.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Nigeria, showing the spread of cattle rustling, transit points and armed groups. Source: The Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime 2020, https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/cattle-rustling-instability-nigeria/

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Fig. 2
figure 2

Death rates from Conflict and terrorism. Source: Our World in Data 2023 Death rate from conflict and terrorism, 1990 to 2019 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-conflict-terrorism-per-100000?tab=chart&country=~NGA

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International Crisis Group (2021) reported that in 2019, a ten-year National Livestock Transformation Plan to curtail the movement of cattle, boost livestock production, and quell the country’s lethal herder-farmer conflict was launched. This was in response to the violence fueled by environmental degradation and competition over land has aggravated long-running tensions in the country’s northern and central regions. The modernization of the livestock production system is critical to ending herder-farmer conflicts, which threaten Nigeria’s political stability and food security. National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) aims to improve security and reduce farmer-herder conflicts by settling herders into ranches.

There is a general assumption that infrastructural, socioeconomic, and political factors act in synergy with environmental factors as reasons behind farmer-herder conflicts, as rooted in the theory of “The Tragedy of the Commons,” which states that poorly managed common resources are subject to overexploitation; and explained through the metaphor of “a pasture open to all” in which each herd owner receives individual benefits from accumulating livestock while sharing the cost of overgrazing with other community members” (Coppock, et al., 2022). The political ecology theory (Van Leeuwen & Van Der Haar, 2016) also indicates that farmer-pastoralist conflicts are a result of inequalities in land distribution attributed to the sociopolitical structures of the society (Bromwich, 2018). Similarly, Eco-violence theory (Homer-Dixon, 1999), elucidates the relationship between environmental factors and violent conflicts, such that “decreasing quality and quantity of renewable resources, population growth, and resource access acts individually or in various combinations to increase the scarcity”. However, critics of the “tragedy of the commons” postulations have reported several communities that developed local management systems to avoid overexploitation of communal resources successfully (Coppock et al., 2022).

Conversely, the ABC Triangle theory of conflict resolution narrated that “not all conflicts are open or visible and drivers of conflict are often hidden; with the need for strong considerations of the context, the behavior of those involved and their attitudes as well as the interconnections among context, behavior and attitude” (IFAD, 2020). In furtherance of the postulations of the ABC theory is the “change of practical logic from cattle logic to capital logic within a changing sociocultural system to explain why and how increasing commoditization and incorporation in the market economy are only now leading to a critical transition from pastoralism to ranching in Central Africa” (Schareika et al. 2021). This is based on the fact that pastoralism and capitalism have crucial similarity in a way that as entrepreneurs, in either case, they seek to maximize their “stock” (Goldschmidt, 1974; Schneider, 1979).

Schareika et al. (2021) analyzed different livestock husbandry systems among pastoralists in southeastern Niger, the peri-urban Far North Region of Cameroon, and the Adamawa Region of Cameroon and reported the persistence of cattle logic among the Woɗaaɓe in Niger, as well as the shift from cattle logic to capital logic among Fulani in Cameroon. Despite the remarkable similarities between pastoralism and capitalism, they constitute two distinct systems in which decision-making is guided by two distinct cattle logic and capital logic as embedded within larger sociocultural systems when the concepts of regimes of value, alienation, and spheres of exchange are considered (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1990; Hutchinson 1992).

Schareika et al. (2021) established that cattle logic is when cattle owners’ decisions and interactions within pastoral systems are aimed at ensuring the long-term continuity of the lineages of humans and animals, while in capital logic, the cattle owners make decisions with the aim of increasing monetary returns on investments. This paper explores the understanding of these logics and how they operate within their respective sociocultural systems is critical for explaining the shift from pastoralism to ranching in Sokoto State Nigeria with a proviso that the two systems often articulate to evolve as a hybrid but in the respective systems, one logic is dominant and the other subservient. This is predicated on the fact that anecdotal shreds of evidence suggest that within northern Nigeria, ranching is viewed suspiciously by many seminomadic pastoralists as it requires dramatic changes in lifestyle. This study examined the attitude and willingness of cattle farmers to establish private grazing lands in Sokoto State Nigeria.

Methods

The study was conducted in Sokoto state and located in North-West, Nigeria, on the national border with the Republic of the Niger in the dry Sahel, surrounded by sandy savannah and isolated hills with an annual average temperature of 28.3 °C (82.9 °F) and due to the fact that it is located near a semi-arid zone experiencing desertification, the effects of climate change with attendant consequences of decreased agricultural output, water scarcity, prevalent food insecurity, income security challenges and recurring conflicts due to struggle for scarce resources for survival. Hausa and Fulani are the pre-dominant tribes while Islam is the main religion and agriculture, and petty trading is the main occupation of the people (Kaltungo, et al. 2019, Yakubu et al., 2016) (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3
figure 3

Map of Nigeria showing Sokoto State. Source: Kaltungo et al. (2019)

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This study targeted Sokoto State, North-West, Nigeria. It is one of the major livestock-producing States in the country. A multistage sampling procedure was used to obtain the sample. In the first stage, 10 out of the 23 livestock-producing Local Government Areas (LGAs) (Sokoto State Ministry of Agriculture & Natural Resources, 2022) were purposively selected in Sokoto State (based on the high population of cattle farmers). The LGAs chosen included Bodinga, Dange Shuni, Isa, Kware, Sokoto South, Shagari, Tambuwal, Tangaza, Wamakko, and Wurno. The second stage was a purposive selection of 32 villages out of 307, also based on the high population of cattle farmers, from the villages. In the third stage, 457 farmers were randomly chosen from the selected villages to give the study sample. Primary data for this study were obtained with the aid of an interview schedule based on a structured questionnaire. The data collection covered the 2022 farming season and was collected from February to June 2022. The data consists of information on the cattle farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics including age, sex, household size, level of education, farm size, farming experience, off-farm employment, herd size, attitude, and constraints to establish private grazing land Analytical Techniques Data for this study were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, and means were used to describe the data while, probit regression and principal component analysis were used to identify the determinants of willingness and attitude towards the establishment of grazing lands.

For the probit models, it is assumed that individual cattle farmers are faced with two alternatives willing to establish private grazing lands or not as expressed by Nagler (1994). Similarly, cattle farmers’ attitudes towards establishment can be favourable or unfavourable. Binary outcomes variables were considered as dependent variables with two possibilities, such as yes/no, favourable/unfavourable. The model is appropriate since it can resolve the problem of heteroscedasticity and satisfies the assumption of cumulative normal probability distribution (Gujarati, 2004).

It is assumed that Y can be specified as follows:

$${\text{Y}}={\upbeta }_{0}+{\upbeta }_{1} {{\text{X}}}_{1{\text{i}}}+{\upbeta }_{2}{{\text{X}}}_{2{\text{i}}}+\dots \dots \dots \dots \dots \dots ..+{\upbeta }_{{\text{ki}}}{{\text{X}}}_{{\text{ki}}}+{{\text{U}}}_{1}$$

And that:

$$\begin{array}{l}{{\text{Y}}}_{{\text{i}}}=1\mathrm{ if Y}>0\\ {{\text{Y}}}_{{\text{i}}}=0\end{array}$$

Otherwise, Where X1, X2……………………Xn represents vector of random variables, β represents a vector of unknown parameters and U represent random disturbance terms (Nagler, 1994). Table 1 presents the list and level of measurements of variables in the Probit model.

Table 1 Description of independent and dependent variables in the Probit model
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The Principal Components Analysis, as specified by Koutsoyiannis (2003), is presented as follows:

  • Given variables (\({X}_{s}\)…original variables of the composite attitude towards private grazing lands)

  • \({X}_{1}\)…\({X}_{p}\) measured in ‘n’ farmers

  • \({P}_{1}\)…\({P}_{p}\): the principal components which are uncorrelated linear combinations of the original variable, \({X}_{1}\)…\({X}_{p}\), given as:

    $$\begin{array}{c}{P}_{1} = {\alpha }_{11}{X}_{1}+{\alpha }_{12}{X}_{2} +\dots +{\alpha }_{1p}{X}_{p}\\ \begin{array}{cc}\begin{array}{ccc}{P}_{2} = {\alpha }_{21}{X}_{1}+{\alpha }_{22}{X}_{2} +\dots +& .& .\end{array}& .\end{array}\\ \begin{array}{c}\begin{array}{ccc}.& .& \begin{array}{cc}.& .\end{array}\end{array}\\ {P}_{p} = {\alpha }_{p1}{X}_{1}+{\alpha }_{p2}{X}_{2} +\dots +{\alpha }_{1pp}{X}_{pZ}\end{array}\end{array}$$
    (1)

The component loadings were chosen on condition that the principal components were not related and that the first component would account for the maximum possible proportion of the total variation in the original variables.

Results and discussion

Table 2 shows that the mean age of cattle farmers is 38.8 years, predominantly male (69%), married (71%), having Qurani’c level of education (68.7%), with mean years of experience and household size as 15.5 years, and 8 persons respectively. These demographic characteristics give insight into the lifestyle, orientation, and cosmopolitan expectations the cattle farmers may have and experience in the combination of cattle and capital logic. Yakubu et al. (2016) stated that the majority of cattle farmers in Sokoto State were males, less than 35 years of age, married, and with no formal education. Abdulkarim et al. (2022) reported that the majority of ruminant farmers in Sokoto State, Nigeria were within the age bracket of 20–40 years. Table 2 further revealed that cattle farmers in Sokoto state predominantly do not have access to credit (81.6%), utilize cattle marketers as a source of credit (55%), obtain a mean credit of N35000, have a mean income of N300000 per annum, and having a mean herd size of 20 cows. Similarly, Cattle farmers are not members of cooperative society (78.8%), not willing to establish private grazing land (82%); but predominantly are owners (53.4%), use radio as an information source (85%), and have different breeds of animal in the herd (55.2%). Yakubu et al. (2016) reported an annual income of ₦100,000 to ₦399,000 and the use of radio as an information channel used by cattle farmers in Sokoto.

Table 2 Description of Cattle farmers, personal characteristics
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Table 3 presents the attitude of cattle farmers towards the establishment of private land grazing. In this paper, the attitude was measured on a Likert scale on opinionated issues related to private land grazing which are different from beliefs. Twenty -four attitudinal statements were rated on a five-point 5-point Likert scale: 1 = Strongly Disagree (SD), 2 = Disagree (D), 3 = Undecided (U), 4 = Agree (A) and 5 = Strongly Agree (SA). Due to the rating scale, the actual mean is 3.0. This denotes that item scores below the actual mean indicate an unfavorable attitude while scores above the actual mean show a favorable attitude. The extent of the deviation from the mean score shows the level of attitude on such items. Cattle farmers are favorably disposed to all the items on the attitudinal scale, however, the most prominent items are Private grazing lands will: increase the cost of watering (\(\overline{X }\) = 4.14, SD = 0.99), enhance the reproductive ability of my cattle (\(\overline{X }\) = 4.40, SD = 0.88), solve the problem of poor carrying capacity (\(\overline{X }\) = 4.36, SD = 0.95), enhance productivity(\(\overline{X }\) = 4.12, SD = 2.09) and reduce feeding cost (\(\overline{X }\) = 4.10, SD = 1.07). It is noteworthy that despite these favorable dispositions, no established private grazing lands have been established. This quickly reinforces the subservient nature of either cattle logic or capital logic in transhumance. Schareika et al. (2021) reported that the cattle logic system and capital logic system articulate with each other and merge into hybrid forms in each of these respective systems, however, one logic is dominant, and the other subservient.

Table 3 Attitude towards private land grazing by cattle farmers
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The results of the Probit regression model on the analysis of cattle farmers’ willingness to establish private grazing land are presented in Table 4. The analysis of the results shows that there is a significant relationship between the independent variables and willingness to establish private grazing land with a Chi-square value of 2.151E + 77. Significant determinants of willingness to establish private grazing land are Age (t = 1.97; p < 0.05); marital status (t = -11.35; p < 0.05); educational level (t = -2.73; p < 0.05); credit amount (t = -44.56; p < 0.05); source of credit (t = -5.01; p < 0.05); herd composition (t = -2.20; p < 0.05); attitude (t = 8.82; p < 0.05) and constraints (t = 1.97; p < 0.05). This implies that the prevailing features of cattle farmers are favorable and would promote the establishment of private grazing land except for the pervasiveness of the subservient of either the cattle or the capital logic.

Table 4 Probit parameter estimates of cattle farmers’ willingness to the establishment of private grazing lands
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Table 5 presents the results of the Probit parameter estimates of determinants of cattle farmers’ attitude towards the establishment of private grazing lands. The analysis of the results shows that the model is well fit with the intercept (t = -37.71; p < 0.05); Chi-Square value of 153,633.86 showing that there is a significant relationship between the independent variables and cattle farmers’ attitude towards the establishment of private grazing lands. Significant determinants of the cattle farmers’ attitude towards the establishment of private grazing lands are Age (t = 25.39; p < 0.05), Gender (t = -5.97; p < 0.05), marital status (t = -7.05; p < 0.05), educational level (t = -12.38; p < 0.05), farming experience (t = -4.61; p < 0.05), household size (t = -6.33; p < 0.05), credit access (t = 3.61; p < 0.05), credit amount (t = -16.94; p < 0.05), ownership status (t = -4.07; p < 0.05), income (t = 3.19; p < 0.05), herd size (t = -5.01; p < 0.05), herd composition (t = -3.16; p < 0.05), constraints (t = 17.01; p < 0.05) and willingness (t = -4.23; p < 0.05). The significance of these variables implies that the attitude towards the establishment of private grazing lands would be influenced by these factors.

Table 5 Probit parameter estimates of determinants of cattle farmers’ attitude towards the establishment of private grazing lands
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The results of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of cattle farmers’ attitudes toward private grazing lands are in Table 6. Four factors were extracted based on the responses of cattle farmers in Sokoto state due to the Kaiser criterion (1960) that was used to select the underlying types and the number of components explaining the data. All variables in each of the extracted components that had Eigen values which is a measure of explained variance; of less than one, while variables with factor loadings greater than or equal to ± 0.300 were considered in the depiction of the components. Similarly, a factor loading significantly contributes to the derived component of the study if it exceeds 0.30; thus, all the items explaining each derived component on the scale were expressed properly on the PCA. According to Otitoju and Enete (2016), and Madukwe, (2004) “only variables with factor loadings of ± 0.346 and above at 10% overlapping variance were used in naming the factors and significant at 1% level of probability; thus, variables that have factor loading of less than ± 0.346 were not used while variables that loaded in more than one constraint were also discarded”. The squared multiple correlations between each item and all other items that are commonalities show the relationship between each variable and all other variables, it also shows the association between variables. In this study, pasture policy management (0.214) is the least explained by the analysis. The extracted components for cattle farmers’ attitudes toward private grazing lands are described as Factor 1 (Resource utilization), Factor 2 (Environment concerns), Factor 3 (practice suitability), and Factor 4 (cattle productivity) and accounted for 21.59%, 6.93%, 6.20%, 5.35% of the variance respectively; with a cumulative 40.06% variance. These results affirm Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity with a value of X2 = 1991.43, p = 0.00, and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy of 0.835. The influence of the variables that belong to the extracted components explaining farmers’ attitudes toward the establishment of private grazing lands was measured by the weights of their factor loadings.

Table 6 Rotated component matrix
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The prominent items under the resource utilization factor are enhanced manure collection and usage, enhanced use of improved grasses as pasture, reduced effect of drought on cattle, solving the farmer-herder crisis, reduced the rate of cattle rustling, prevention of the spread of cattle pests and diseases, increase the cost of watering, enough feed all year round, remove the problem of poor carrying capacity, reduce the cost of supplements and pasture policy management. Aryal et al. (2018) reported that although transhumance is herders’ adaptive management to environmental conditions, the integration of crop and livestock production without conflicts derives mutual benefits and enhanced sustainability. Similarly, Houessou et al. (2020) stated that transhumance serves mutual benefits and relationships through encampment/manuring contracts, exploitation of grazing lands and watering points, and trading and bartering of cattle.

For the environmental concerns factor, the items are effective pest and disease control, protecting the environment, solving the problem of overstocking, ensuring availability of nutritious grasses, reducing feeding costs, facilitating the formulation of balanced ration, and attaining market weight quickly. Usongo and Moussa (2021) indicated that transhumance impacts several components of the biophysical environment such as disruptions of protected areas, silting up of watering areas, soil degradation, destruction of forests, and diseases transmission from livestock to wild animals Ellison et al (2022) Bah et al (2021) reported that transhumance through reduction of total phytomass and herbaceous biomass leads to progressive landscape fragmentation and transformations of land cover and impacts livelihoods through associated livestock theft, community conflicts, and disease transmission.

The practice suitability factor is composed of items such as suitability for cattle production in Nigeria and an increase in profit. Umutoni and Ayantunde (2018) reported that transhumant indicated a decline in vegetations species richness along the transhumance corridor. Motta et al (2018) stressed that seasonal livestock transhumance drives the dynamics of multiple livestock infectious diseases.

The cattle productivity factor included enhanced cattle reproductive ability, enhanced productivity, and controlled quality of nutrient intake. Ocak-Yetisgin et al. (2022) stated that transhumance farmers’ adaptation to climate change was associated with production systems and focused on modifying their management and feed operations. Namgay et al. (2021) found that “grazing in the future will likely transform to a semi-intensive system with smaller herd sizes interventions implemented by the livestock department”.

The results of the Rotated Component Matrix in Table 7 display the loadings for each item on each rotated component, again clearly showing which items make up each component, and the Component Transformation Matrix displays the correlations among the components prior to and after rotation. The first component of Resource utilization is the most highly correlated with the willingness to establish private grazing lands. Similarly, there is a high correlation between Resource utilization and environmental concerns and vice versa with -0.527 and 0.662 respectively; though inversely correlated implying that an increase in resource utilization would lead to less concern for environmental concerns. The suitability of the practice of transhumance has no correlation with other factors extracted in the principal component analysis. Cattle productivity is also highly correlated with environmental concerns. The results have stressed further the interdependencies in the livestock production systems, livelihoods, and the underlying reasons for the interplay of economic and non-economic reasons for cattle production. It then implies that despite the threats and loss of livelihoods associated with transhumance cattle production due to increasing competition for resources, there is a prevalence of cattle logic and capital logic.

Table 7 Component transformation matrix
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Conclusion

This paper provides empirical evidence of the recalcitrance of transhumance in the establishment of private grazing lands in Sokoto State Nigeria based on the exposition of cattle logic and capital logic. The intervention of the livestock transformation agenda has not been able to stem the wave of conflicts and human killings associated with transhumance in Nigeria. Inherent in the failure of proposed and sometimes sponsored solutions to the farmer-herder conflicts are the attitudinal predisposition and willingness to the interventions as dominated by the cattle and capital logic. While either of the extremes would not be able to resolve the deadly conflicts, the delineation and hybridization of the logic associated with cattle production systems and the uprightness to operate within the limits of each of the logic will guarantee permanent solutions rather than the subservient applications of either of the logic. Factors and variables associated empirically would go a long way to enhance sustainable conflict resolution mechanisms and ensure synergistic production systems by farmers and herders as well as other stakeholders in the crop-livestock value chain.