Beyond Scarcity: Instigators, Sponsors and the Drivers of Communal Violence between the Bassa Komu and Egbura Mozum in Bassa Local Government Area of Kogi State, Nigeria (2017 To 2022).

Abstract

Scholarship on communal violence in Nigeria's Middle Belt offers a mature account of the causes of conflict, land scarcity, contested indigeneity, colonial administrative legacies and institutional bias, but a much thinner account of who and what converts a latent resource grievance into recurrent violence. This study addresses that gap through a qualitative examination of the conflict between the Bassa Komu and Egbura Mozum communities in Bassa Local Government Area of Kogi State between 2017 and 2022. Adopting Resource Competition Theory and drawing on key informant interviews complemented by documentary sources and analysed through content analysis, the study distinguishes the causes of resource competition from its drivers, and identifies two driver mechanisms. The first is trigger-based escalation, in which symbolically charged events (a court ruling on a disputed fishing pond, the desecration of the Genge masquerade, festival processions and political appointments) reactivate a dormant contest over land, ponds and market access in short and intense cycles. The second is elite instigation and external sponsorship, whereby middle-aged community members, political stakeholders and financially capable elites mobilise and fund youth violence, with respondents reporting arms stockpiling and financing that reaches beyond the local government area. The study argues that the conflict has generated its own constituency of beneficiaries, a localised conflict economy whose participants hold a material interest in its continuation, and concludes that resolution requires not only equitable resource governance but the deliberate demobilisation of those who profit from irresolution.