Design Principles, Common Land, and Collective Violence in Africa

Abstract

The conventional wisdom blames colonialism as the root cause of violence in Africa, but at the expense of analytical clarity about the context of collective violence over common land. This article uses qualitative data and Elinor Ostrom's perspective on governing the commons to analyze collective violence over common land in an African community. It finds that the absence of certain design principles strikes at the root of the violence in the African case. Exploring the less understood intricacies enriches analytical clarity about the conditions that lend themselves to sustaining the commons and gaining the compliance of generation after generation of resource users with property rights institutions for governing the commons.

Government institutions and persistent communal conflicts in Nigeria

“…We adopted a triangulation of sampling techniques because of the complexity the subject matter, and residents' aggression in discussing issues relating to communal conflicts in their warring communities. This is emphasized in Oyerinde's (2019) study.…”

“…With the volume of conflict cases in courts, government strategically delays cases in order to protect their preferred community; also, they dictate major issues to the judges, so that the judges intentionally focus on mere rules or technicalities, ignoring the substantive issues. Oyerinde (2019) argued that the courts, special tribunals and Commissions of Inquiry on communal conflicts manipulate these uncoordinated rules and technicalities to displace the logical issues in the substantive matter, thereby extending the duration of the trials. This tallied with Osawe's (2015) view that adequate enforcement was absent due to security officials' bias and over‐familiarization with the perpetrators, thus, leading to victims' embrace of vengeance.…”

“…The IDIs revealed that in the course of prosecution or peace‐building, most prosecutors, especially the police officials, were transferred from one zone to another, mainly to delay the general court process. Oyerinde (2019) observed that there is a high level of corruption among the prosecutors, and in most cases, the judicial officials handling conflict cases are major obstacles to a fair judgment.…”