Violent Fraternities and Public Security Challenges in Nigerian Universities: a Study of the “University of the South”

In a recent advertorial placed in a leading national daily, The Guardian, Pyrates Confraternity (a.k.a. National Association of Seadogs) made a vigorous defence of its legitimacy as a credible organization, claiming that it had ceased its activities in all tertiary institutions in Nigeria since 1984. It denounced student groups “parading themselves” as members of the fraternity and threatened to take legal action against such groups if they did not desist from doing so immediately (The Guardian 2011, 9).

I have deliberately avoided the conception of most of these non-governmental armed groups as “gangs” because of the lingering controversial over the definition of gangs (see, Ezeonu, 2014, Doing gang research in Canada: Navigating a different kaleidoscope, unpublished); Esbensen, et al., 2001. I only used it in this context because that was how the government defined the groups.

Most private tertiary institutions in Nigeria are relatively new; and are yet to record a significant presence of student fraternities.

The Vikings call aspiring members “neurons” or “nonso.”

Fraternity members in Nigeria generally use this word to refer to maiming. The idea is that after inflicting violence on the intended target, the individual would become deformed, maimed or ‘mended’.

Like in most tertiary institutions in Nigeria, elections into the Students Union government at U of S usually involves a fierce political competition among student-candidates. This form of campus politics used to be dominated by student political activists. However, about 75 % of my respondents reported that this political process has been hijacked by fraternities which are now the major sponsors of candidates. According to them, fraternities with poor performances in these elections often provoke post-election conflicts to try to settle scores with their rivals and to intimidate the emergent students’ leadership.

There have been a few attempts by the government and various administrations of the tertiary institutions concerned to tackle this problem. For instance, in a number of institutions, a few students who were implicated in fraternity violence have been expelled while the government have charged a negligible number to court. Nevertheless, these attempts have been at most tepid. Firstly, the government's prosecution efforts were often too feeble, as many of the alleged offenders are sometimes children or relatives of powerful members of the society. Also, given the political connections of many of these fraternities, university administrations are sometimes pressured by influential people in government to reverse the expulsions of alleged offenders. Nevertheless, in a number of institutions, non-fraternity students have sometimes fought back although these efforts were mostly provoked by particular incidents rather than the broader desire to end the activities of fraternities generally.