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Afrobarometer Briefing Paper No. 2
August 2002
VIOLENT SOCIAL CONFLICT
AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
IN NIGERIA
What do Africans think about violent social conflict, including its causes and preferred
solutions? How do conflicts affect popular support for democracy?
The Afrobarometer introduced questions on conflict in a survey in Nigeria in August 2001. We
chose to start with Africa’s most populated nation because it is a continental bellwether; as goes
Nigeria, as a source of either chaos or stability, so goes the neighborhood.
Since independence, Nigeria has experienced regular incidents of violent conflict, including:
•
A secession attempt by the Eastern Region and a devastating civil war;
•
A festering confrontation between (Northern) military power holders and (Western) civic
activists over the annulled presidential election of June 12, 1993;
•
Clashes over oil revenues between the federal government and minority ethnic groups of
the Niger Delta;
•
Disputes over land in the multi-ethnic “middle belt”; and
•
Deadly religious clashes between Christian and Muslim communities, for example in
Kano and Zaria in the late 1980s, and in Kaduna and Jos in 2001 (at the same time that
the Afrobarometer survey was being conducted).
The advent of democracy in May 1999 has not ameliorated violent social conflict in Nigeria and
may even have exacerbated it. If anything, religious tensions have increased as numerous
Northern states have adopted sharia (Islamic) law largely in reaction to the power shift signaled
by the election of a South-Westerner as president. At the same time, armed militias have sprung
up to defend ethnic interests (like the Odu’a People’s Congress in the South West and Arewa
People’s Congress in the North West), and vigilante groups have taken it upon themselves to
administer mob justice in various urban centers. The Obasanjo government has tended to overreact
to outbreaks of...