INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT
Northern Nigeria: Background to Conflict
Dakar/Brussels, 20 December 2010: Nigeria’s far north is not
the hot bed of Islamic extremists some in the West fear, but it needs
reinforced community-level peacebuilding, a more subtle security
response, and improved management of public resources lest lingering
tensions lead to new violence.
Northern Nigeria: Background to Conflict,*
the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the
region’s conflict risks. Violence has flared up there periodically for
more than 30 years. Mainly in the form of urban riots, it has seen
Muslims pitted against Christians, confrontations between different
Islamic sects, and rejectionist sects against the state. The relative
calm that much of northern Nigeria had enjoyed for several years was
broken by the emergence in 2009 of Boko Haram, a radical group that
appears to have some links to al-Qaeda.
In the build-up to the 2011 national elections, the worst-case
scenario is that local violence will polarise the rest of the country.
This must be avoided through actions at the local, regional and national
level.
“While some in the West panic at what they see as growing Islamic
radicalism in the region, the roots of the problem are more complex and
lie in Nigeria’s history and contemporary politics”, says Titi Ajayi,
Crisis Group’s West Africa Fellow.
Many common factors fuel conflicts across Nigeria: in particular,
the political manipulation of religion and ethnicity and disputes
between supposed local groups and “settlers” over distribution of public
resources. The failure of the state to assure public order, contribute
to dispute settlement and implement post-conflict peacebuilding measures
also plays a role, as does economic decline and unemployment. As
elsewhere in the country, the far north – the twelve states that apply
Sharia (Islamic law) – suffers from a potent mix of economic malaise and
contentious, community-based distribution of public resources.
But there is also a specifically northern element. A thread of
rejectionist thinking runs through northern Nigerian history, according
to which collaboration with secular authorities is illegitimate. While
calls for an “Islamic state” in Nigeria should not be taken too
seriously, despite media hyperbole, they do demonstrate that many in the
far north express political and social dissatisfaction through greater
adherence to Islam and increasingly look to the religious canon for
solutions to multiple problems in their lives.
On the positive side, much local conflict prevention and
resolution does occur, and the region has historically shown much
capacity for peaceful co-existence between its ethnic and religious
communities. Generally speaking, for a vast region beset with social and
economic problems, the absence of widespread conflict is as notable as
the pockets of violence.
The starting point for addressing the conflicts must be a better
understanding of the historical, cultural and other contexts in which
they take place. The region has experienced recurrent violence,
particularly since the early 1980s. These are the product of several
complex and inter-locking factors, including a volatile mix of
historical grievances, political manipulation and ethnic and religious
rivalries.
“Northern Nigeria is little understood by those in the south,
still less by the international community, where too often, it is viewed
as part of bigger rivalries in a putative West-Islam divide”, says EJ
Hogendoorn, Crisis Group’s Acting Africa Program Director. “Still, the
overall situation needs to be taken seriously. If it were to deteriorate
significantly, especially along Christian-Muslim lines, it could have
grave repercussions for national cohesion in the build-up to national
elections in 2011”.
