Farmer–herder conflict management: towards a collaborative environmental governance in Nigeria

African countries currently battle different degrees of conflicts and instabilities, manifesting as unhealthy competition for resources, violence, food insecurity and displacements. These phenomena reveal deficiencies in the processes, institutions and relationships that shape environmental management and conservation towards balancing human needs and enhancing sustainability. The farmer–herder conflict, a long-standing dispute between farmers and nomadic herders over land and resources, particularly in the Middle Belt region in Nigeria, is one of the violent and complex conflicts in Nigeria that is rooted in environmental and resource-based issues. While different policy-oriented and scholarly attentions have described various militarised interventions and other institution-based, top-down decision-making processes directed at addressing the farmer–herder conflict, the extent of public-participatory and collaborative environmental policy formulation and implementation in the resolution of the farmer–herder conflict is still understudied. This article is mixed-method, descriptive desk research that employs the Collaborative Governance Theory and obtains secondary data from books, periodicals and the internet to examine the stakeholders involved in the governance of the environment in Nigeria. It also elucidates the extent to which collaborative environmental governance is incorporated into managing the farmer–herder conflict and the inherence shortfalls in the interventions. The article concludes to establish a collaborative environmental governance for peaceful intervention in the farmer–herder conflict, and that there is need to address the inherent challenges of limited community-based participation, poor inter-agency collaboration and corruption. This will consequently bring about inclusive policies that address the needs of both farmers and herders.