Violence in Nigeria

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, which began in 1999 with the election of Olusegun Obasanjo followed by Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, has been fraught with security challenges, including spikes in communal and sectarian violence in the Middle Belt, militancy and criminality in the Niger Delta, and insurgency in the Northeast. Those with a stake in peace and security in Nigeria, whether they be donor agencies, security services, civil society, government, private sector, or community leaders, all rely on data and indices for their baselines; site-selection; resource allocation; and monitoring and evaluation of their programs, projects, and activities. The level of analysis varies by stakeholder, some of whom are focused at the national level, while others are focused at the state, local government, or community levels. However, regardless of mandate, projects can easily be derailed if a systems lens is not applied in recognition of the fact that local level pressures can impact state and national trends, just as national trends can impact local patterns. An analytical focus on Boko Haram in the Northeast, for instance, to the exclusion of inter-communal conflict in the Middle Belt, can easily lead to misinterpretations and unpleasant surprises. A particular local government in the Niger Delta may have a long, peaceful history, but if the wider trends are not understood, traditional leaders may miss the early signs of conflict escalation until it is too late.

While the Niger Delta may be one of the most resource-rich regions in the world, it remains mired in cycles of conflict that perpetuate underdevelopment and threaten human security. As can be explored through a more in-depth analysis of the eight individual states of the Niger Delta that follows, the problems that plague the region are complex and often deeply entrenched. These issues include poor governance at all levels that is often exacerbated by a political culture that simultaneously centralizes power (and access to wealth) at the top yet relies more on informal networks than civic participation. In addition, the overall weak capacity of the state to protect its citizens at all levels has given rise to various non-state actors that have filled the vacuum, at a very violent and deadly cost. Compounding the general structural problems of the state and local level government, the cycles of violence that have so often plagued the Niger Delta are exacerbated greatly by the vastly uneven distribution of resources from the oil industry which are amassed at the top and rarely trickle down to benefit local communities. Adding to these pressures is the problem of extreme environmental degradation in a region where up to 60 % of people rely on natural resources for their overall livelihoods. Increased social fragmentation and long-simmering minority tensions also add layers of complexity to the security challenge in the Niger Delta, as various manifestations of these particular drivers of conflict often seem to appear out of nowhere and can quickly spiral into crises.

While grouping states regionally can often help disaggregate the various conflict ecosystems in the country for more analytical clarity, in this case the variations are perhaps more disparate than in other regions. The two North Central states of Jigawa and Katsina were among the most peaceful in the country during the period of 2009–2013. Kano and Kaduna, however, had significant spikes of violence during the period. Kaduna itself has a high degree of complexity and variation, with inter-communal violence in the southern part of the state, as well as high levels of election violence in 2011 and terrorism in 2012. With the loss of candidate Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner from the Congress for Progressive Change, to incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner from the Niger Delta, during the presidential elections, violent riots broke out and led to sectarian killings, with Muslim rioters killing Christians and members of ethnic groups from southern Nigeria, and Christians retaliating by killing Muslims and burning mosques and other properties. In the predominantly Christian towns of southern Kaduna, for example, violence left more than 500 dead, the majority being Muslim. Despite the police managing to protect Muslims and Christians who had fled to police stations for safety, they could not control the surge of violence occurring outside the stations and barracks. Unfortunately, the eventual subduing of protestors and mobs ended in reported human rights violations due to excessive use of force by the police (Nigeria: Post-Election Violence Killed 800 2011).

The Middle Belt region, located in the central part of the country, is culturally diverse with a predominantly Christian population to the south and Muslim to the north. In addition to criminality, political tension and terrorism, conflict emblematic of this region is inter-communal and tends to fall along several overlapping fault lines: (1) farmers versus pastoralists, (2) Christians versus Muslims, and (3) indigenes versus non-indigenes. In Plateau, for instance, there has been significant levels of violence in the northern LGAs between the ethnically Berom (who are predominantly Christian farmers and considered to be indigenes) and the ethnically Fulani (who are predominantly Muslim pastoralists and considered to be non-indigenes). Farther south, in Wase and Langtang local government areas, there has been violence between the ethnically Fulani and the ethnically Tarok (predominantly Christian farmers.) In Benue and Taraba states there has been violence between the Fulani and the Tiv (also predominantly Christian farmers).

In the international media, Boko Haram and #BringBackOurGirls are emblematic of conflict and insecurity in Nigeria. But this is reductive both to Nigeria as a whole and to conflict in the Northeast itself. As detailed in this book, across the country there are patterns of criminal, intra-communal, inter-communal, ethno-sectarian, political, and separatist conflict drivers and trends. Emanating from the Northeast, the phenomenon of Boko Haram has elements of all those types. Notwithstanding the fact that Boko Haram was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Department of State in November 2013, there is no group that calls itself Boko Haram. Before 2009, such extremists were sometimes called the Nigerian Taliban or the Nigerian Mujahideen. Residents of Maiduguri, in Borno State, eventually started calling them Boko Haram, which is a Hausa derivation referring to something ambiguous (Books? Education? Fraud? (Murphy 2014)) as being religiously forbidden, or haram. Usually, when people said Boko Haram, they were referring to the followers of Muhammed Yusuf, whose own group was actually called Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-da’wa wal-Jihād (JAS). Now, every time a bomb explodes, a police officer is shot, a bank is robbed, or a village is attacked, the incident is attributed generically in the media to Boko Haram, regardless of whether JAS had anything to do with it. The various objectives of violence seem inconsistent and at times even at cross-purpose. While many attacks are no doubt inspired by ideology, others are ethno-sectarian, or criminal. Some attacks have more to do with state or national politics than any radical jihadist agenda, which would seek to usurp or replace the existing political structures. The anarchic nature of the violence suggests a more complex dynamic than a simple diagnosis of insurgency.

While insurgency raged 300 miles to the east, tallying up the highest numbers of fatalities per capita in the country during the period of 2009–2013, in the Northwest things were relatively calm during this period, with some states (Sokoto and Kebbi) having very few incidents per capita and others, such as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), with periodic spikes in violence. The FCT had a significant number of incidents and fatalities resulting from bombings, protests, and gang violence. In Zamfara there were a number of highly lethal raids on villages by large gangs and several cases of pastoral/farmer clashes. The conflict patterns in the five states included in this region vary by trend and issue. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the region is also very diverse socioeconomically, comprising some of Nigeria’s poorest states (Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto) as well as Niger, which is one of the wealthier states and the Federal Capital Territory, which is second only to Lagos in terms of having the lowest levels of poverty. While difficult to identify a common thread or theme in this region, disaggregating to the state and LGA-level highlights hotspots and issues of concern (Fig. 6.1).

The southwestern region of the country is the heart of “Yorubaland” and hosts Lagos, one of the largest cities in the world. Lagos, which means “lakes” in Portuguese, was the capital of Nigeria from 1914 to 1991, when the seat of government was moved to Abuja. Politically, the southwest has shifted over the course of the Fourth Republic, with a tendency to join cross-regional coalitions in opposition to whichever region claims presidential incumbency when the incumbent is not from the southwestern region. In 1999, when the region’s own Olusegun Obasanjo (from Ogun State) came into power on the PDP ticket, the region was solidly AD but shifted to PDP in 2003 when Obasanjo was reelected. After he turned over power to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (from the North), also of the PDP in 2007, the ACN was ascendant in the region, capturing most state houses in 2010 and 2011. Then, in 2013, with PDP’s Goodluck Jonathan from the Niger Delta in the presidency, the ACN joined the CPC, the ANPP, and part of the AGPA to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) in a major reshuffling of the political landscape, laying the foundation for a new cross-regional opposition coalition, including the Southwest and the far North.

The level of violence was relatively low in the South Central region of Nigeria between the years of 2009 and 2013. On average, according to Nigeria Watch (data formatted on the P4P Peace Map), there was an increase in political violence during the 2011 election year, but no state ranked higher than 16 in reported fatalities per capita over the five year period.

In years past, the collection, coding, integration, and analysis of conflict data as done here, would have been exceedingly cost prohibitive to non-profits such as The Fund for Peace. However, due to advances in technology and effective collaboration among local, national, and international stakeholders, situational awareness at multiple levels of granularity is now possible, even in countries like Nigeria, emblematic of complexity. This relatively new ability to analyze trends at multiple levels of analysis simultaneously is critical for a better understanding of the conflict landscape. Sometimes it is necessary to peel back layers so as not to misread the big picture and sometimes the big picture is necessary to understand why a particular incident may have taken place. It is tempting, sometimes to think that the closer you get to the ground, the closer you get to the truth. But this premise is belied when a colleague is killed and there is no clear answer as to what extent the killing may have been triggered by ethnic, communal, political, criminal, and/or interpersonal factors. At the other extreme, an aggregation of data at the national level tells you very little about the intermediate conflict ecosystems and how they do or do not interrelate in a given time period. A bombing in Kaduna by Boko Haram might mean something very different by way of perpetrator, objective, and effective response, than a similar bombing in Maiduguri. Also, localized pastoral conflicts in the Middle Belt or communal violence in the Niger Delta may or may not be influenced by broader political and sectarian dynamics. As stakeholders, regardless of mandate, whether local, sub-national, or national, effective peace and security planning requires this multi-level analysis.