Influence of Information and Communication Technology Skills on the Alleviation of Herders and Farmers Clashes in Nigeria

The study examined the influence of information and technology skills on the alleviation of herders and farmers’ clashes in Nigeria. Farmers/herders clash has been a thorn in the flesh of peaceful co-existence in community who has lived together for decades. The study attempted to answer two research questions and two corresponding hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. A quasi-experimental Research design was adopted for the study. The population was made up of respondents from local communities consisting of 97 farmers and 74 cattle herders from Kaura Namoda, Shinkafi and Maru local government areas of Zamfara state. Test of Information and Communication Technology Alleviation of Herders Farmers Clashes (TICTAHFC) was administered as instrument for data collection. Respondent in the selected local government were exposed to an extensive training conducted for three weeks. Contents in the training manual included topics in usage of technological devices, processing and dissemination of information on Internet office technologies, WhatsApp application, Facebook Application, and local networking skills. The instrument was validated by experts in the field of psychology and counselling and Cronbach Alpha was used in obtaining a reliability coefficient of 0.79. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while simple regression t-test was used to analyse the hypotheses. The findings revealed that information dissemination using technological skills had influence in alleviating herders and farmers clashes in Nigeria. The study concluded that information dissemination and processing through the use of office technological skills if properly imparted on the respondents can be utilized to a high extend in alleviating farmers/herders clashes in Nigeria. A major recommendation advanced was that the Office IT professional and Extension workers should expose farmers and herders to technological skills on processing and dissemination of videos, YouTube, and live streaming program to teach them proper land usage pattern and need for peaceful co-existence.

Keywords: office technology, technological skills, alleviation, farmers, herders