‘Your land or your life’! ECOWAS free movement regime, migration, and resource conflicts in West Africa

Abstract

West African borderlands still depict free labour migration that weaves a complex grid of relations and inter-dependences over the ‘artificial’ borders inherited from colonialism. Migrants consider the sub-region as a single cultural and socio-economic unit within which trade and services are intertwined across countries, and where border crossing is a main part of people’s lives and livelihoods. This study reflects on migration and violent resource conflicts in West Africa such as migrant herders-farmers conflict in Nigeria to interrogate the wider security implications of ECOWAS free movement protocols in the sub-region. It links the deepening resource scarcity in the sub-region to the increase in undocumented migration. The study concludes that due to poor enforcement of ECOWAS visa-free regime and competition for scarce resources, the migration-conflict nexus has intensified banditry and violent conflicts in West African borderlands, especially between herders and farmers in Nigeria.