Conflict in Nigeria

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...