Effects of Land-Induced Homicide on Conflicting Communities in Anambra State

Abstract

Homicide is a moral act which is considered a murder when it is deliberate and premeditated; and which is punishable as a crime. There are categories of homicide cases which may include politically and socially motivated assassinations, abduction-fordeath killings, and election-related killings, killing in the course of armed robbery; and death resulting from inter/intra-communal conflicts mostly on land/boundary disputes, among others. This study focused on the effects of land-induced homicide on conflicting communities in Anambra State. A population size of 530 adult respondents was selected for the study. The population size was selected through the process of categorising the communities of the study into six social sub-groups. Qualitative data was also derived from both relevant and enlightened individuals from the communities of the study and from families of victims of homicide that resulted from violent land dispute. The instrument for the quantitative data was the questionnaire schedule; while qualitative data were collected through the use of Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) and Key Informant Interviews (KII) with individuals of victims’ families who were identified through snowball sampling procedure. The quantitative data collected from the field were processed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Land is an economic asset which controls everything about the business of a person, a community, a State or a Nation. The economic interest and attachment man has on the land or on the resources from the land can easily drive man to blindly go out of himself, to do anything possible in order to recover his land in a situation where some other person had encroached on the land. The study showed that encroachment and lack of proper boundary demarcation are the most common factors that lead to land conflict among communities
in Anambra State.

Key Words: Assassination, Conflict, Development, Homicide