Journal articles on the topic 'Identity politics – Nigeria'

Religious and ethnic identity clashes laid the structure of the Nigerian state in 1914, which transmogrified into and characterized the struggle for control of power and distribution of national resources. This paper explores the nature and manifestation of these conflicts since 1999. It seeks to find out if ethno-religious struggles led to the emergence of major conflicts in Nigeria since 1999, their impact on human insecurity, and the influence of politics on the conflicts. This inquiry is designed in line with a one-shot case study, while literature survey and ex post facto methods were adopted as methods of data collection. Trend analysis is adopted for data analysis. Analysis reveals that ethno-religious struggles were the primary progenitor of conflicts in Nigeria since 1999, and have debilitating consequences while politics exacerbated ethno-religious conflicts. Upholding Nigeria's circular state and implementing the National Political Reforms Conference Report is the panacea for ethno-religious conflicts in Nigeria.

This article examines the politics of youth in Ijebu-Remo (henceforth Remo) from the 1950s to the present. The emergence of the politics of youth in the 1950s and 1960s drew on precolonial discourse and was closely associated with the emergence of Remo's anti-federal postcolonial political identity. Since Nigeria's political and economic decline in the mid-1980s, strong feelings of exclusion – strengthened further by the political sidelining of Yoruba-speaking politicians in national politics between 1993 and 1999 – have contributed to an increase of nationalist sentiment in Remo youth politics. This is enacted through secrecy, a reinvention and utilisation of ‘traditional’ cultural practice, and the growing definition of local identity through ethnic discourse. Traditionally, Remo youth and elite politics have legitimised and supported each other, but the cohesion between these groups has declined since the return to democracy in 1999. Rivalry and conflict over local and national resources have led to bitter intergroup fighting, and young men's strategies to combat social exclusion remain mostly individual.

Abstract:The convergence of Yoruba nationals and the intensification of nationalism in southwestern Nigeria for self-assertion, political brokerage, and power relations in colonial and post-colonial eras were reinforced by the projection of Yoruba cultural heritage and patrimony expressed both in person and literary productions. Using textual analysis and observation, this paper examines some aspects of cultural heritage and Yoruba nationalism and how cultural heritage created patrimony, the sense of a nation, established civic virtue, and formed local (re)publics in southwestern Nigeria. The present discourse further examines how cultural patrimony is used to echo Yoruba sense of marginalization and political superiority in Nigeria. The paper further argues that most of this cultural heritage addresses a fairly well-defined audience, most especially those sympathetic to Yoruba nationalism and politics. Thus, cultural heritage and patrimony are active agents of nationalism and political identity in southwestern Nigeria.

The paper examined racial politics and identity contests in Northern Nigeria. The paper specifically traced the trajectory of racial politics and examined the dynamics of identity construction and contests in Northern Nigeria. An essentially qualitative method of data collection comprising primary data generated through in-depth interviews and secondary data generated through archival records were used. These were then subjected to content and descriptive analyses. Findings from the study revealed that racial politics originated during colonial rule with the British supposedly claiming gene/biological affinity of the Hausa-Fulani as with the Caucasoid groups of Eurasia. The Hausa-Fulani were consequently designated as the civilized group and super-imposed over minority groups that were classified as pagans. About six decades after colonial rule, Hausa-Fulani dominance remains a social reality in spite of identity contests and recreation by the minority groups of Northern Nigeria. Starting with the creation of the Middle Belt identity in the late 1950s, the constituent groups within the Middle Belt have consequently recreated other ethnic identities within Northern Nigeria. Notwithstanding, Hausa-Fulani remains the dominant group in Northern Nigeria socio-political structure.

Nigeria celebrated sixty years of political independence in 2020 despite sustaining an array of gains and losses, especially regarding the nation’s inability to manage the several identities it houses and the potential they portend for national integration. Although, having plural identities should provide an opportunity for diversity-induced development, especially having stayed together since the cultural amalgamation 106 years ago (1914-2020), and since the country’s independence sixty years ago (1960-2020). This should have provided enough time frame to enable the region to solidify its cultural, lingual, ethnic, and religious differences to move towards national integration. However, the reality is contrasting, wherein peaceful coexistence and respect for rule of law are conspicuously inconsistent. This paper, thus, adopts a descriptive approach to dissect Nigeria’s sixty years of independence and the role identity politics has played in instituting national integration. The paper concludes that identity politics is as a result of colonial amalgamation and is indeed the bane of national integration in Nigeria. As a result, it is recommended that the arrangement of Nigeria’s governance should be restructured to represent a more united front, where the views, demands, choices, dreams, cultures, and aspirations of all groups are captured through a constitutional conference.

Nigeria celebrated sixty years of political independence in 2020 despite sustaining an array of gains and losses, especially regarding the nation’s inability to manage the several identities it houses and the potential they portend for national integration. Although, having plural identities should provide an opportunity for diversity-induced development, especially having stayed together since the cultural amalgamation 106 years ago (1914-2020), and since the country’s independence sixty years ago (1960-2020). This should have provided enough time frame to enable the region to solidify its cultural, lingual, ethnic, and religious differences to move towards national integration. However, the reality is contrasting, wherein peaceful coexistence and respect for rule of law are conspicuously inconsistent. This paper, thus, adopts a descriptive approach to dissect Nigeria’s sixty years of independence and the role identity politics has played in instituting national integration. The paper concludes that identity politics is as a result of colonial amalgamation and is indeed the bane of national integration in Nigeria. As a result, it is recommended that the arrangement of Nigeria’s governance should be restructured to represent a more united front, where the views, demands, choices, dreams, cultures, and aspirations of all groups are captured through a constitutional conference.

This study examines the linkages between relative deprivation and identity politics in a postcolonial state. It further investigates the relationship among these variables and nation-building challenges in the postcolony. It is a case study of the Nigerian state in West Africa, which typically harbours the attributes of postcoloniality and indeed, large measures of relative deprivation in her sociopolitical and economic affairs. The study is also an interrogation of the neo-Biafran agitations in Nigeria. It has been attempted in the study to offer distinctive explanations over the problematique of nation-building in the postcolonial African state of Nigeria, using relative deprivation, identity politics and the neo-Biafran movement as variables. In framing the study’s theoretical trajectories and in historicizing the background of the research, ample resort has been made to a significant range of qualitative secondary sources. A particularly salient position of the study is that it will actually be difficult to locate on the planet, any group of people whose subsequent generations (in perpetuity) would wear defeat on the war front, as part of their essential identity. Hence, relative deprivation was found to be more fundamental than identity politics in the neo-Biafran agitations in Nigeria. However, the compelling issues were found to squarely border on nation-building complications in the postcolony.

This article examines the dimensions of indigenous political structures that sustained local governance in colonial Yorubaland. Legitimated by reconstructed traditional political authorities and modern concepts of development, Yoruba indigenous political structures were distorted by the system of indirect rule. Conversely, obas (Yoruba monarchs), baales (head chiefs), chiefs, Western-educated Christian elites and Muslim merchants embraced contending interpretations of traditional authorities to reinforce and expand their power in a rapidly shifting colonial context. With a strong emphasis on development and governance, collective political action also entailed the struggle over the distributive resources of the colonial state. Traditional and modern political leaders deployed strong communal ideologies and traditional themes that defined competing Yoruba communities as natives and outsiders.

The study investigates how coinages and slogans are political conduits used strategically by individuals in constructing their identities in the 2019 general election political discourse in Nigeria. The study adopted Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak‘s Discourse-Historical analysis model of CDA, together with Clusivity theory and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics. Twenty four comments involving coinages and slogans that cut across popular subject areas of politics relating to the Nigerian 2019 general election between 2018 and 2019 are purposively sampled. Data for the study were retrieved from the Nairaland forum archives. The comments were sampled, scrutinized and analysed using the content analysis method. The use of coinages and slogans can be implicit or explicit. It was revealed that when constructing identity, political actors can employ coinages and slogans to reflect the notion of “positive self-representation” and “negative other-representation” established in Wieczorek’s strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion in Clusivity theory. Coinages and slogans are also used for different discursive strategies such as persuasion, negotiation, sarcasm and rhetorical questions. Political actors used coinages and slogans as political conduits to delineate and negotiate their political affiliations and dissociations and also to achieve, advocate, alter and (re)build their political ideologies and leanings in the 2019 general election in Nigeria.

This article examines the dynamics of representation between cultural and economic forms of gender inequality on Nigerian female blogs. Through a thematic analysis of 253 comments retrieved from five female-authored blogs, I draw on prominent cases of gender inequality in Nigeria, such as ‘President Muhammadu Buhari’s position on his wife’ and the ‘rejection of the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill’. The analysis showed that blog discussions among females in Nigeria suggest extensive intolerance to cultural change, especially in comparison to the more positive attitude towards redistribution. To tackle this complexity, I argue that gender equality advocacy in Nigeria should commence mainly from a redistributive standpoint. This needs to be accompanied by the ulterior aim of achieving recognition. Overall, the study contests the idea that identity politics is threatening to replace the issue of redistribution on the global political agenda by highlighting the primacy of redistributive politics in blog discourse. It enriches media studies and gender research by providing rare insight into the practical connections between cultural and economic politics of gender inequality in an online discursive context.

AbstractThis paper demonstrates that the persistent (mis)management of census is a key variable in the pattern of political instability and diminishing capacity that have defined the Nigerian State since it attained relative political independence in 1960. With roots in the highly exploitative and manipulative colonial enterprise, the crises of census in Nigeria continue to be sustained in contemporary times by the inherited contradictions that define the nation's political economy. Thus every past census in Nigeria has been a victim of intense elite contestation for power and resources, and therefore rather than enhance the planning and development process of the country, has further impaired it. The paper argues that any census, the scheduled 2005 edition inclusive, conducted in the context of extant hotly-disputed and largely illegitimate State structure, will not be able to accomplish its set objectives; with the decision by the Nigerian State to deny rather than come to terms with Nigerians' primary forms of identity, ethnic and religious, set to further erode rather than enhance the integrity of the exercise. It concludes that census will stop being inverted in its role in Nigeria only when the governance structure becomes wholly decentralized, the federating units become truly so, and census as an exercise becomes wholly de-politicized.

This article examines urban inequalities and minority politics in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Jos (Nigeria). Though advanced democracies are considered to be generally more egalitarian than their emergent counterparts, there is very little, if any, scholarly attention dedicated to understanding the specific ways in which the dimensions and parameters of inequalities resemble or contrast between the two contexts. Moreover, while there is growing interest in the identity-to-politics link among urban groups, there is very little comparative sense of how the processes play out across different contexts. Based on a critical analysis of theoretical and empirical perspectives, we show that in Amsterdam, an anti-Muslim discourse, rather than group level inequalities, led to the politicization of immigrant groups. In Jos, however, minority politics is driven by a strong overlap between ascribed identities and inequalities. Though the identity-to-politics link is characterised by a complex set of processes in both cases, the outcomes vary. While minority groups in Amsterdam articulate and pursue their interests within the confines of a well-regulated political space, parties in Jos deploy violent strategies in pursuing their interests because of the prevalence of weak institutions and an unregulated political space that operates on a winner-takes-all logic. The conclusion reiterates a few key insights derived from this cross-fertilization.

The advocacy for gayism and lesbianism in Nigeria is informed by transnational cultural processes, transculturalism, interculturalism, multiculturalism and globalisation. Although critical dimensions on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) are becoming recurrent subjects in Nigerian scholarship, scholarly works on LGBT, sexual identity and Nigerian cinema remain scarce. Perhaps, this is because of indigenous Nigerian cultural processes. While Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist cum socio-political activist, campaigns against marginalisation and subjugation of gays and lesbians and for their integration into the Nigerian cultural system, numerous African socio-cultural and political activists hold a view that is dialectical to Adichie’s. The position of the members of the anti-gay group was further strengthened with the institution of stringent laws against gay practice in Nigeria by the President Goodluck Jonathan led government in 2014. In recent times, the gay, bisexual, transgender and lesbian cultures have been a source of raw material for filmmakers. Some of the thematic preoccupations of films have bordered on questions such as: what does it mean to be gay? Why are gays marginalised? Are gays socially constructed? What is the future of the advocacy for gay and lesbian liberation in Nigeria? Although most Nigerian film narratives are destructive critiques of the gay culture, the purpose of this research is not to cast aspersion on the moral dimension of LGBT. Rather, I argue that films on LGBT create spaces and maps for a critical exploration of the gay question. While the paper investigates the politics of gay culture in Nigerian cinema, I also posit that gays and lesbians are socio-culturally rather than biologically constructed. This research adopts literary and content analysis methods to engage Moses Ebere’s Men in Love with reference to other home videos on the gay and lesbian motifs.

The importance of youth involvement in political and developmental processes of society can hardly be exaggerated. However, despite the large percentage of young people in Nigeria and the historical importance of intergenerational continuity with an emphasis on national identity, very little is really known about the degree of youth engagement in the country’s politics. Therefore, this study, in the form of a descriptive survey, analyzes gender and age differentials of youth participation in Nigerian politics. A random sampling technique was used in selecting 200 youths from 5 political wards (40 from each ward) in Ijebu-Ode Local Government Area of Ogun State. Additionally, a self-structured questionnaire was designed and used for data collection, while a t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were employed to test the three hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed no significant gender difference ( t = 1.56, P > 0.05) or age difference ( t = 1.44, P > 0.05) among the young population of Nigeria actively engaged in politics in the country. Conclusively, the authors recommend that efforts should be geared towards fighting illiteracy and unemployment in the country, as these are known to be main reasons for vandalism, senseless violence, anarchism, racketeering, and cultism among the Nigerian youth, while realistic political organizations under control and leadership of the young population should be formed.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the genealogies of the Ìlàjẹ and the narrative of belonging that reinforces claims to ownership of land and natural resources such as oil. The article maps how oil flow stations, pipelines and platforms have come to represent an ancestral promise of wealth to many members of Ìlàjẹ communities. This claim making is embedded in a mythic origin that continuously reinforces a distinct identity that projects an imagined community connected to the Yorùbá of south-west Nigeria as well as the oil-rich Niger Delta region. While many scholars have studied the myth of origin of the Yorùbá, in most cases focusing on rituals and political imagination that intersect with linguistic evidence in determining Yorùbá identity, these scholars have often neglected the centrality of these myths to oil resources. Thus, I investigate how the Ìlàjẹ narrative of belonging creates its own specificity of ‘ownership’ of natural resources through ritual performances connected to migration and dispersal of subject populations. I examine how such narratives create spaces of opportunity for the organization of protests against multinational oil corporations and the Nigerian state.

Politics of patronage based on primordial identity is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria. The impact of such patterns of politicking has been obviously untoward. This study interrogates the apparent manifestation of ethno-clannish patronage in the politics of political appointments under Muhammadu Buhari’s civilian administration (2015-date). Relying on a descriptive analysis of secondary data, as well as a selective application of prebendal theory, the study observes that members of Buhari’s ethno-communal grouping tend to have been favored rather disproportionately in terms of the allotment of political appointments at the federal level. The study posits that such an ethno-clannish posture smacks of the politics of exclusion, which negates the spirit of national integration. The study further contends that not only had President Buhari favored his kinsmen and tribesmen in his appointments, but he has also appointed many of his family relations into strategic positions, thus entrenching nepotism in the process of statecraft. The study submits that such an approach to statecraft holds negative implications for good governance and national integration in Nigeria.

Abstract This article considers artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s use of photographic transfers and popular culture in her 2016 painting “Portals” to craft an artwork specific to her experience across multiple points of social identification in the United States and Nigeria. Through close reading and the study of Crosby’s formal and conceptual strategies, Zelt investigates how varying degrees of recognition work through photographic references. “Portals” contests assimilationist definitions of American identity in favor of a representation which is multiplicitous, operating across geographies. By juxtaposing images from different times, in different directions, Crosby constructs “contact zones” and provokes a mode of looking that reflects a feeling dislocation from the country in which she stands, the United States, and the country with which she also identifies, Nigeria. After a brief introduction to the artist and her relationship to Nigerian national politics, the article explores how distance and recognition work through image references to express a particular form of transnational identity, followed by an examination of uses of popular culture references to engage with blackness and an interdependent “Nigerian-ness” and “American-ness.” It concludes by contextualizing the painting’s display amid waves of amplified nativist purity in the US.

The global spread of Salafism, though it began in the 1960s and 1970s, only started to attract significant attention from scholars and analysts outside of Islamic studies as well as journalists, politicians, and the general public following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda Central. After the attacks, Salafism—or, as it was pejoratively labeled by its critics inside and outside of the Islamic tradition, “Wahhabism”—was accused of being the ideological basis of all expressions of Sunni militancy from North America and Europe to West and East Africa, the Arab world, and into Asia. According to this narrative, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Za- wahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other Sunni jihadis were merely putting into action the commands of medieval ‘ulama such as Ibn Taymiyya, the eighteenth century Najdi Hanbali Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and modern revolutionary ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam. To eradicate terrorism, you must eliminate or neuter Salafism, say its critics. The reality, of course, is far more complex than this simplistic nar- rative purports. Salafism, though its adherents share the same core set of creedal beliefs and methodological approaches toward the interpretation of the Qur’an and hadith and Sunni legal canon, comes in many forms, from the scholastic and hierarchical Salafism of the ‘ulama in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority countries to the decentralized, self-described Salafi groups in Europe and North America who cluster around a single char- ismatic preacher who often has limited formal religious education. What unifies these different expressions of Salafism is a core canon of religious and legal texts and set of scholars who are widely respected and referenced in Salafi circles. Thurston grounds his fieldwork and text-based analysis of Salafism in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to one of the world’s largest single Muslim national populations, through the lens of this canon, which he defines as a “communally negotiated set of texts that is governed by rules of interpretation and appropriation” (1). He argues fur- ther that in the history of Nigerian Salafism, one can trace the major stages that the global Salafi movement has navigated as it spread from the Arab Middle East to what are erroneously often seen as “peripheral” areas of the Islamic world, Africa and parts of Asia. The book is based on extensive fieldwork in Nigeria including interviews with key Nigerian Salafi scholars and other leading figures as well as a wide range of textual primary sourc- es including British and Nigerian archival documents, international and national news media reports, leaked US embassy cables, and a significant number of religious lectures and sermons and writings by Nigerian Salafis in Arabic and Hausa. In Chapter One, Thurston argues that the Salafi canon gives individ- ual and groups of Salafis a sense of identity and membership in a unique and, to them, superior religious community that is linked closely to their understanding and reading of sacred history and the revered figures of the Prophet Muhammad and the Ṣaḥāba. Salafism as an intellectual current, theology, and methodological approach is transmitted through this can- on which serves not only as a vehicle for proselytization but also a rule- book through which the boundaries of what is and is not “Salafism” are determined by its adherents and leading authorities. The book’s analytical framework and approach toward understanding Salafism, which rests on seeing it as a textual tradition, runs counter to the popular but problematic tendency in much of the existing discussion and even scholarly literature on Salafism that defines it as a literalist, one-dimensional, and puritani- cal creed with a singular focus on the Qur’an and hadith canon. Salafis, Thurston argues, do not simply derive religious and legal rulings in linear fashion from the Qur’an and Prophetic Sunna but rather engage in a co- herent and uniform process of aligning today’s Salafi community with a set of normative practices and beliefs laid out by key Salafi scholars from the recent past. Thurston divides the emergence of a distinct “Salafi” current within Sunnis into two phases. The first stretches from 1880 to 1950, as Sun- ni scholars from around the Muslim-majority world whose approaches shared a common hadith-centered methodology came into closer contact. The second is from the 1960s through the present, as key Salafi institutions (such as the Islamic University of Medina and other Saudi Salafi bodies) were founded and began attracting and (perhaps most importantly) fund- ing and sponsoring Sunni students from countries such as Nigeria to come study in Saudi Arabia, where they were deeply embedded in the Salafi tra- dition before returning to their home countries where, in turn, they spread Salafism among local Muslims. Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, as with other regions such as Yemen’s northern Sa‘ada governorate, proved to be a fertile ground for Salafism in large part because it enabled local Muslims from more humble social backgrounds to challenge the longtime domi- nance of hereditary ruling families and the established religious class. In northern Nigeria the latter was and continues to be dominated by Sufi or- ders and their shaykhs whose long-running claim to communal leadership faced new and substantive theological and resource challenges following the return of Nigerian seminary students from Saudi Arabia’s Salafi scho- lastic institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Chapters Two and Three, Thurston traces the history of Nigerian and other African students in Saudi Arabia, which significantly expanded following the 1961 founding of the Islamic University of Medina (which remains the preeminent Salafi seminary and university in the world) and after active outreach across the Sunni Muslim world by the Saudi govern- ment and Salafi religious elite to attract students through lucrative funding and scholarship packages. The process of developing an African Salafism was not one-dimensional or imposed from the top-down by Saudi Salafi elites, but instead saw Nigerian and other African Salafi students partici- pate actively in shaping and theorizing Salafi da‘wa that took into account the specifics of each African country and Islamic religious and social envi- ronment. In Nigeria and other parts of West and East Africa, this included considering the historically dominant position of Sufi orders and popular practices such as devotion to saints and grave and shrine visitation. African and Saudi Salafis also forged relationships with local African partners, in- cluding powerful political figures such as Ahmadu Bello and his religious adviser Abubakar Gumi, by attracting them with the benefits of establishing ties with wealthy international Islamic organizations founded and backed by the Saudi state, including the Muslim World League. Nigerian Salafis returning from their studies in Saudi Arabia actively promoted their Salafi canon among local Muslims, waging an aggressive proselytization campaign that sought to chip away at the dominance of traditional political and religious elites, the Sufi shaykhs. This process is covered in Chapter Four. Drawing on key sets of legal and exegetical writ- ings by Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and other Salafi scholars, Nigerian Salafis sought to introduce a framework—represented by the canon—through which their students and adherents approach re- ligious interpretation and practice. By mastering one’s understanding and ability to correctly interpret scripture and the hadith, Salafis believe, one will also live a more ethical life based on a core set of “Salafi” principles that govern not only religious but also political, social, and economic life. Salaf- ism, Thurston argues, drawing on the work of Terje Østebø on Ethiopian Salafism, becomes localized within a specific environment.As part of their da‘wa campaigns, Nigerian Salafis have utilized media and new technology to debate their rivals and critics as well as to broad- en their own influence over Nigerian Muslims and national society more broadly, actions analyzed in Chapter Five. Using the Internet, video and audio recorded sermons and religious lectures, books and pamphlets, and oral proselytization and preaching, Nigerian Salafis, like other Muslim ac- tivists and groups, see in media and technology an extension of the phys- ical infrastructure provided by institutions such as mosques and religious schools. This media/cyber infrastructure is as, if not increasingly more, valuable as the control of physical space because it allows for the rapid spread of ideas beyond what would have historically been possible for local religious preachers and missionaries. Instead of preaching political revo- lution, Nigerian Salafi activists sought to win greater access to the media including radio airtime because they believed this would ultimately lead to the triumph of their religious message despite the power of skeptical to downright hostile local audiences among the Sufi orders and non-Salafis dedicated to the Maliki juridical canon.In the realm of politics, the subject of Chapter Six, Nigeria’s Salafis base their political ideology on the core tenets of the Salafi creed and canon, tenets which cast Salafism as being not only the purest but the only true version of Islam, and require of Salafis to establish moral reform of a way- ward Muslim society. Salafi scholars seek to bring about social, political, and religious reform, which collectively represent a “return” to the Prophet Muhammad’s Islam, by speaking truth to power and advising and repri- manding, as necessary, Muslim political rulers. In navigating the multi-po- lar and complex realm of national and regional politics, Thurston argues, Nigerian Salafi scholars educated in Saudi Arabia unwittingly opened the door to cruder and more extreme, militant voices of figures lacking the same level of study of the Salafi canon or Sunni Islam generally. The most infamous of the latter is “Boko Haram,” the jihadi-insurgent group today based around Lake Chad in Nigeria, Chad, and Niger, which calls itself Jama‘at Ahl al-Sunna li-l-Da‘wa wa-l-Jihad and is led by the bombastic Abubakar Shekau. Boko Haram, under the leadership first of the revivalist preacher Mu- hammad Yusuf and then Shekau, is covered at length in the book’s third and final part, which is composed of two chapters. Yusuf, unlike mainstream Nigerian Salafis, sought to weaponize the Salafi canon against the state in- stead of using it as a tool to bring about desired reforms. Drawing on the writings of influential Arab jihadi ideologues including Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and the apocalyptic revolutionary Juhayman al-‘Utaybi, the lat- ter of whom participated in the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Yusuf cited key Salafi concepts such as al-walā’ min al-mu’minīn wa-l-bara’ ‘an al-kāfirīn (loyalty to the Believers and disavowal of the Disbelievers) and beliefs about absolute monotheism (tawḥīd) as the basis of his revival- ist preaching. Based on these principle, he claimed, Muslims must not only fulfill their ritual duties such as prayer and fasting during Ramadan but also actively fight “unbelief” (kufr) and “apostasy” (ridda) and bring about God’s rule on earth, following the correct path of the community of the Prophet Abraham (Millat Ibrāhīm) referenced in multiple Qur’anic verses and outlined as a theological project for action by al-Maqdisi in a lengthy book of that name that has had a profound influence on the formation of modern Sunni jihadism. Instead of seeing Boko Haram, particularly under Shekau’s leadership, as a “Salafi” or “jihadi-Salafi” group, Thurston argues it is a case study of how a group that at one point in its history adhered to Salafism can move away from and beyond it. In the case of Shekau and his “post-Salafism,” he writes, the group, like Islamic State, has shifted away from the Salafi canon and toward a jihadism that uses only stripped-down elements from the canon and does so solely to propagate a militaristic form of jihad. Even when referencing historical religious authorities such as Ibn Taymiyya, Thurston points out, Boko Haram and Islamic State leaders and members often do so through the lens of modern Sunni jihadi ideologues like Juhay- man al-‘Utaybi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, figures who have come to form a Sunni jihadi canon of texts, intellectuals, and ideologues. Shekau, in short, has given up canonical Salafism and moved toward a more bombastic and scholastically more heterodox and less-Salafi-than- jihadi creed of political violence. Thurston also pushes back against the often crude stereotyping of Af- rican Islamic traditions and movements that sees African Muslims as being defined by their “syncretic” mix of traditional African religious traditions and “orthodox” Islam, the latter usually a stand-in for “Arab” and “Middle Eastern” Islam. Islam and Islamic movements in Africa have developed in social and political environments that are not mirrors to the dominant models of the Arab world (in particular, Egypt). He convincingly points out that analysis of all forms of African Islamic social and political mobi- lization through a Middle East and Egypt-heavy lens obscures much more than it elucidates. The book includes useful glossaries of key individuals and Arabic terms referenced in the text as well as a translation of a sermon by the late, revered Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani that is part of the mainstream Salafi canon. Extensive in its coverage of the his- tory, evolution, and sociopolitical and religious development of Salafism in Nigeria as well as the key role played by Saudi Salafi universities and religious institutions and quasi-state NGOs, the book expands the schol- arly literature on Salafism, Islam in Africa, and political Islam and Islamic social movements. It also contributing to ongoing debates and discussions on approaches to the study of the role of texts and textual traditions in the formation of individual and communal religious identity. Christopher AnzaloneResearch Fellow, International Security ProgramBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University& PhD candidate, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

The professional Nigerian nationalist historiography which emerged in reaction against the imperialist Hamitic Hypothesis – the assertion that Africa's history had been made only by foreigners – is rooted in a complex West African tradition of critical dialogue with European ideas. From the mid-nineteenth century, western-educated Africans have re-worked European ideas into distinctive Hamitic Hypotheses suited to their colonial location. This account developed within the constraints set by changing European and African-American ideas about West African origins and the evolving character of the Nigerian intelligentsia. West Africans first identified themselves not as victims of Hamitic invasion but as the degenerate heirs of classical civilizations, to establish their potential to create a modern, Christian society. At the turn of the century various authors argued for past development within West Africa rather than mere degeneration. Edward Blyden appropriated African-American thought to posit a distinct racial history. Samuel Johnson elaborated on Yoruba traditions of a golden age. Inter-war writers such as J. O. Lucas and Ladipo Solanke built on both arguments, but as race science declined they again invoked universal historical patterns. Facing the arrival of Nigeria as a nation-state, later writers such as S. O. Biobaku developed these ideas to argue that Hamitic invasions had created Nigeria's proto-national culture. In the heightened identity politics of the 1950s, local historians adopted Hamites to compete for historical primacy among Nigerian communities. The Hamitic Hypothesis declined in post-colonial conditions, in part because the concern to define ultimate identities along a colonial axis was displaced by the need to understand identity politics within the Nigerian sphere. The Nigerian Hamitic Hypothesis had a complex career, promoting élite ambitions, Christian identities, Nigerian nationalism and communal rivalries. New treatments of African colonial historiography – and intellectual history – must incorporate the complexities illus-trated here.

AbstractThis article reconstructs the controversies following the release of the figures from Nigeria's 1963 population census. As the basis for the allocation of seats in the federal parliament and for the distribution of resources, the census is a valuable entry point into postcolonial Nigeria's political culture. After presenting an overview of how the Africanist literature has conceptualized the politics of population counting, the article analyses the role of the press in constructing the meaning and implications of the 1963 count. In contrast with the literature's emphasis on identification, categorization, and enumeration, our focus is on how the census results informed a broader range of visual and textual narratives. It is argued that analysing the multiple ways in which demographic sources shape debates about trust, identity, and the state in the public sphere results in a richer understanding of the politics of counting people and narrows the gap between demographic and cultural history.

This particularistic and exclusionary form of identity politics has intensified in recent years within and among nations…. It is responsible for some of the most egregious violations of international humanitarian law and, in several instances, of elementary standards of humanity…. Negative forms of identity politics are a potent and potentially explosive force. Great care must be taken to recognise, confront and restrain them lest they destroy the potential for peace and progress that the new era holds in store (Kofi Annan, The Guardian, (Nigeria) 1997:8).

AbstractThe existence of the Ogoni ethnic group is taken for granted in the literature that has grown out of the minority rights and environmentalist campaigns of the 1990s. This article departs from this tradition by engaging the historical development of the Ogoni ethnic group, taking as its point of departure elite politics in the context of colonial categories and post-colonial politics. With comparative data on the development of ethnic groups in Nigeria, it shows how elite politics and state structures and administrative decisions influenced the development of the Ogoni ethnic group and the identity it purveys. It also shows that differing interests in oil with unequal power bases spurred rigid positions that served to facilitate or constrain the execution of the Ogoni identity-building project.

AbstractWhat role did law play in articulating sovereignty and citizenship in postcolonial Africa? Using legal records from the secessionist Republic of Biafra, this article analyzes the relationship between law and national identity in an extreme context—that of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970). Ideas about order, discipline, and legal process were at the heart of Biafra's sense of itself as a nation, and they served as the rhetorical justification for its secession from Nigeria. But they were not only rhetoric. In the turmoil of the ensuing civil war, Biafra's courts became the center of its national culture, and law became its most important administrative implement. In court, Biafrans argued over what behaviors were permissible in wartime, and judges used law to draw the boundaries of the new country's national identity. That law played this role in Biafra shows something broader about African politics: law, bureaucracy, and paperwork meant more to state-making than declensionist views of postcolonial Africa usually allow. Biafra failed as a political project, but it has important implications for the study of law in postcolonial Africa, and for the nation-state form in general.

The cycle of individual and communal lives from birth to death is supposedly preserved by the government through institutions. However, political, social, and economic activities are engaged to make ends meet wherein the government is to serve as an unbiased regulator. The activities that play out in Southern Kaduna reflected politics of being on one side with interplay on origin, identity, religion, and locality. On the other hand, it reflects politics of belonging that play on kin, reciprocity, and stranger status. It has thus resulted in violence, suspicion, and persistent conflict. The study examines citizen’s inclusiveness in peacebuilding initiatives and the people’s perception of the sincerity of the government. The research relies on secondary sources where governmental and non-governmental publications and documents from relevant and reliable sources enriched the socio-historical approach, particularly those relating to contestation in the region. The study found out that just like situations in the other northwest states of the country, the crisis exacerbates by the government’s inability to mediate fairly between warring parties to ensure fairness and justice as well as failure to apprehend and punish the culprits, even as recommendations from the various interventions were unimplemented. Thus, the spate of violence continues.

In two landmark essays published in 1973, the eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz offered an early assessment of what he termed “The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,” referring to the newly independent nation-states of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ranging with characteristic ease and flair across Burma, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Nigeria, Geertz argued that an “Integrative Revolution” was under way, but one complicated and compromised by the inherent tension between “essentialism” and “epochalism,” between “Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States.” Geertz argued:The peoples of the new states are simultaneously animated by two powerful, thoroughly interdependent, yet distinct and often actually opposed motives—the desire to be recognized as responsible agents whose wishes, acts, hopes, and opinions “matter,” and the desire to build an efficient, dynamic modern state. The one aim is to be noticed: it is a search for identity, and a demand that the identity be publicly acknowledged as having import, a social assertion of the self as “being somebody in the world.” The other aim is practical: it is a demand for progress, for a rising standard of living, more effective political order, greater social justice, and beyond that of “playing a part in the larger arena of world politics,” of “exercising influence among the nations.”

Abstract Identity, as discussed in this paper, is seen as a phenomenon which is constantly changing under certain circumstances. From empirical point of view, the identity of man is influenced by the environment through experience and unconscious socialization; it is continually modified by the individual’s encounter with the world. The aim of this work is to analyse the intricacies involved in understanding the situation and mentality of the Igbos as far as identity is concerned and to determine how this hampers or helps in the development of the Igbo/African society. In this work ‘identity’ as a means of development with regard to the Igbo people of South-East Nigeria is treated. The work is methodically qualitative. It analyses literatures and different views on identity and tailors the discussion of development along the lines of hermeneutical approach to subjective experiences. The Igbos and Africans find themselves sometimes in the danger of a mixture of identity. This is the case with most of the Igbo people who are scattered all over the world and who are becoming more foreign in their trends and ways of life. Being unable to maintain a definite identity, one is lost in the politics of development. Those who still hang on to pure imitation of the western life are jeopardizing their autonomy and by extension, frustrating development of the African society. Rediscovering the Igbo/African Identity and putting it to the service of development in the African continent is the task of the Africans themselves.

This article traces the influences of American anthropology and racial discourse on Christian missions and indigenous converts in British Northern Nigeria from the 1920s. While colonial ethnological studies of religious and racial difference had represented non-Muslim Northern Nigerians as inherently different from the Muslim Hausa and Fulani peoples, the American missionary Albert Helser, a student of Franz Boas, applied American theories and practices of racial assimilation to Christian evangelism to renegotiate interreligious and interethnic relations in Northern Nigeria. Helser successfully convinced the British colonial authorities to allow greater mobility and influence of “pagan” converts in Muslim areas, thus fostering more regular and more complicated Christian-Muslim interactions. For their part, Christian Northern Nigerians developed the identity of being modernizers, developed from their narratives of uplift from historical enslavement and oppression at the hands of Muslims. Using new sources, this article shows that a region long assumed to be frozen and reactionary experienced changes similar to those occurring in other parts of Africa. Building on recent studies of religion, empire, and the politics of knowledge, it shows that cultural studies did not remain academic or a matter of colonial knowledge. Northern Nigerians’ religious identity shaped their desire for cultural autonomy and their transformation from converts into missionaries themselves.

History education has been able to give a flowing account of how various cultures have been co-existing prior European encounter. The historical account has evolved from the mythical stage into the scientific stage with evidence adduced and coming forward to revise and even correct initial assumptions. In the face of these revisions and corrections, it is not in place to demand: how do we teach African history to students? What is the connection between religion and culture in the making of a people? Using Kwame Appiah’s cosmopolitan perspective as my theoretical framework and through the method of philosophical analysis, I tender that the idea of an identity that is distinct or peculiar to a particular people cannot be reliable. To make my point lucid, this research uses the Yoruba of south-west Nigeria as paradigm. I contend that the emergence of Egbe Omo Oduduwa is not tied to a special or peculiar identity, but a surge in the need to emphasize common grounds over differences in order to establish a common cause for a perceived identity. The point that has been established thus far is that all the small kingdoms and mighty empires that claim to share the Yoruba identity in contemporary times, were hitherto sworn enemies who hardly perceive things from a similar perspective. It is however interesting to note that it was during the colonial era and the press for political independence that informed the need to coalesce and create an identity from that which cuts across all of them to initiate a common denominator. From the exploration of the Yoruba peoples from earliest times to the present times, it is the case that there was no perception of common ground prior 1945. The factors that led to the recognition of a common ground are tied to the struggle for liberation from foreign powers. It is on this that note that this research submits that identities are human creations and they neither primordially original nor pure.

<p><em>This paper x-rays the utilitarian functions and the nature of vehicle inscriptions and stickers in south-western Nigeria. It traces the history of the use of vehicle writings in Nigeria in general and the southwest in particular chronicling their long history of usage, and noting that it is a common phenomenon nowadays to come across vehicles, most especially commercial ones, heavily bedecked with an array of colourful inscriptions and stickers of different sizes and in different languages and that the posting of the moving emblems on vehicles has become so prevalent and so widespread that there is hardly an automobile on the highways in South-western Nigeria that does not transport them. Our study also reveals that vehicle insignia are meant to serve different purposes some of which include construction of religious messages, moral/philosophical messages, group/individual identity messages, warning and cautionary messages, humours, wits, ribaldry, advertising, politics and public enlightenment messages among several others. Our study further reveals that inscriptions and stickers serve as formidable communicative tools used to transmit diverse messages to the decoders.</em></p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: <em>vehicle inscriptions, vehicle stickers, language, nation, heterogeneous society</em></p><p>_________________________________________</p><p>DOI &gt; <a href="https://search.crossref.org/?q=10.24071%2Fjoll.2019.190211">https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.2019.190211</a></p><p><em><br /></em></p>

In the 1960s a host of African nations discovered their independence and, with it, rediscovered the pleasure and the pain of the past. States such as Nigeria and Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda, using both local and expatriate scholars, embarked on the reconstruction of “national histories,” with an enthusiasm which, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, seems enviable. From an academic point of view, this period witnessed the rejection of the colonial distortion of Africa's past—i.e., the idea that basically the continent had none worth talking about—and the historiographical offensive which was thus launched may be seen to have been ultimately successful.In terms of African politics, history was seen in many new states as a means of nation-building and the fostering of national identity. In Tanzania, for example, precolonial leaders such as Mirambo and Nyungu-ya-Mawe, the relative linguistic unity provided by Swahili, and the anticolonial Maji Maji uprising were used, both consciously and subliminally, to encourage the idea that Tanzanians had shared historical experiences which straddled both the precolonial and the colonial eras.It must be conceded that history did not always prove as reliable an ally to African politicians as to scholars of Africa. Penetration into the Nigerian past served, indirectly at least, to magnify the regionalism which had already troubled the decolonization process in that territory, and underlined the distinct historical experiences of, for example, the Yoruba in the south and the Hausa-Fulani in the north.

This article explores the comedic construction of national identity in Nigerian stand-up comedy. By national identity, I mean collective perspectives on the sociopolitical and cultural realities of postcolonial Nigeria. While critical discourse analysis provided the framework for interpretation, data was derived from purposively sampled recorded videos of Nigerian stand-up comedians. Such collective perspectives are constructed when a comedian indexes cultural/political events and situations in a monologue. The investigation reveals four identity mapping strategies: performing (non)theatrical identities, using the comedy voice to indicate multiple identities, constructing a trickster identity and constructing a resilient spirit identity. These strategies entail foregrounding assumptions about the Nigerian state and using language in a strategic way to indicate sociopolitical and cultural realities.

In Nigeria, the deliberate intimidation and exploitation of the common man by the ruling class, for political aims, has reached endemic proportions. These strategic intimidations come in diverse forms, and clearly qualify as acts of terrorism. In the Yoruba worldview, ‘Arodan’ is a cautionary concept which is employed by the elders to curb the excesses of troublesome children. However, it has evolved to be a two-edged sword which could either be used for both corrective andcurative aims, or manipulated for punitive and evil purposes. Arodan, a dance workshop performance by the students of the Department of Theatre and Media Arts, FUOYE, is built on the Yoruba conceptual frame of ‘Arodan’. The dance theatre is a metaphor which explores the ‘Arodan’ concept to identify Nigerian politicians as the ‘elders’, and the common man as the ‘troublesome child.’ Deploying the social identity theory (SIT), this article, examines the use of choreographic metaphors to enact the forms, features, and effects of political terrorism within the Nigerian space in the Arodan performance. It finds that thedesperate yearnings which stem from selfish political interests are cloaked under terrorist acts in Nigeria. In conclusion, the paper affirms that the resolutions simulated in Arodan – national reorientation, political awareness, vigilance, and collective will should be deployed as proactive measures to counter political terrorism in the country at developmental crossroads. Keywords: Political terrorism, SIT, Arodan dance theatre, Choreographic images, Nigeria

In Nigeria, in relation to the aforesaid functions, everyday citizens and professional humourists use humour to express their expectations from and disappointments in the socio-political leadership of the country. Common Nigerian jokes indicate the country’s travails with ethnicity and failed political leadership. They also enunciate populist perspectives on nationhood, identity and the challenges of everyday living. In spite of the centrality of humour to daily life in Nigeria, scholarly interests in its sociocultural, political, rhetorical, interactional and interpersonal dimensions have been very minimal. According to Obadare (2016), it is as if once something is categorised as humour, it is expunged from any serious interrogations. There are diverse and numerous dimensions of humour in Nigeria, given the country’s extensive and still expanding popular culture landscape. A handful of these dimensions are examined in the papers that make up this special issue of EJHR.

This essay investigates the development of European-style military music as practised in Nigeria with regard to the influence of its indegenization processes by its practitioners on the Nigerian soil. The areas in which the development is discussed include the new roles and functions of performance, the new thematic sources of military music arrangers, instrumentation, the stylistic and technical bases for orchestration as well as the overall institution of military music in Nigeria. It also raises an argument on the parameters for judging the African identity in a contemporary Nigerian military music composition and those of its allied genres. The essay concludes that, by virtue of its new contexts of performance as well as performance structure, Nigerian military music has shifted from being a substratum of the European music tradition in Nigeria to being a substratum of contemporary music on the Nigerian music scene.

This study examines the “historical” role of the New Yam Festival in the social integration of Moba people over time, aiming to supplement the dearth of scholarly work on the festivals that had fostered inter-group relations through cultural identity among the Ekiti-Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria. Using a hybrid historical and anthropological research method, which includes oral interviews, participant observation, photography and video and tape recordings to document and elicit data, the study discusses the political and social interaction of the EkitiYoruba social group through the New Yam Festival. The study reveals that the New Yam Festival is traditionally rooted in kinship culture, and is motivated by social and political integration and enhancement within a socio-political space. The festival demonstrates how ritual can promote and enhance peace, cooperation and stability among the different ethnic groups in Nigeria. It is a long-standing festival that renews and celebrates kinship, identity and social relations, and could be used in significant new initiatives to promote national integration and unity among the diverse ethnic groups, promoting social integration in Nigeria, where inter-group relations have tended to become group competition, even among ethnic groups that have historical ties.

This study examines the relationship among gender, democracy, and national development in Nigeria. This translates to a discussion of the possible linkages among gender identity, gendered representation, and national development in the country. Beyond the typical gender theorization, this article squarely focuses on women’s political representation within the Nigerian state and the power implications of the inherent challenges. The work reechoes the issue of underdevelopment as a societal phenomenon. The methodology of the contribution is normative argumentation. The theoretical framework is the power theory. The study concludes that the disarticulations between gendered representation and democracy have invariably led to contentious national development in Nigeria.

Purpose: Colonialism, a phenomenon which has long gone remains an interesting subject of debates especially among the African scholars. This is perhaps, due to the aggressive nature in which colonialism violently altered the evolutionary destiny of the African states. Any study that carefully dig deeply can easily come up with an area of contribution regarding the subject matter of colonialism in Africa. This study specifically explored how colonialism emasculated the political and religious institutions of Northern Nigeria with a view to ascertain the current crisis of identity that the region is facing. Design/Methodology/Approach: Descriptive analytical design was adopted, thematic analysis and a qualitative content analysis method was used in this study which analyzed critically the various views and dimensions on the role played by colonialism in the emasculation of political and religious institutions in Northern Nigeria. Findings: The results revealed that Northern Nigeria had a well-articulated and functioning political and religious institutions prior to the emergence of the exploitative colonialism. The British colonialist supervised the destruction of these heritages and replaced them with the alien ones that failed to function well leading to crisis of identity. Implications/Originality/Value: So it is concluded that colonialism succeeded in damaging the Northern Nigerian heritage and that there must be a reversal towards that indigenous culture and social settings for Northern Nigeria to record a meaningful progress in the 21st century.

This paper examines the quality of local government leaderships in Nigeria. It explores how local governments’ inefficiency and poor leadership have been a major challenge facing the development process in Nigeria. The paper has two objectives. The first is to identify the professionalism of a sample of Nigerian local government chairpersons. The second is to examine whether there are systematic correlations between local government chairpersons’ professionalism, political partisanship, local characteristics, and performance. The paper argues that the quality of local government chairpersons has significant policy implications because of their vital role in policy making and implementation. The concluding section provides some policy recommendations on how local government leaders could improve performance.

Abstract:The recent (2000) reenactment of the Shari'a legal code in twelve states of Northern Nigeria and the other expressions of Islam in public affairs in the region have been preceded by a long history that should also be understood as determined by the social and political conditions of specific stages in the evolution of the Nigerian social formation. This article attempts to explain Islamism in the region through such factors as Islamic identity for many Muslims, the competition over interpretation and representation of Islam, the nature of the Nigerian state and society, Muslim organizations and leadership, as well as the activities of other religious organizations (especially Christian evangelicals). In this regard, Islamism is driven essentially by internal (Nigerian) forces, even though external forces may have had an effect. The article argues that while Islamism poses major challenges to the Nigerian state and society, it has also exposed itself to challenges from both Muslims and Nigerian society as a whole.

This study seeks to investigate the effect of presidential elections on investors’ portfolio selection in Nigeria from 2003 to 2011. The regression analysis was used to identify the effects that election could have on stock prices in the country, while event study was applied to investigate the focused effects of election event on portfolio selection in the Nigerian stock exchange. Price index for high and medium capitalization stocks were used in the analysis. The study showed that there were low returns performance in the stock market during elections and that elections events have strong (generally) negative effects on abnormal returns for the selected companies in the Nigerian Stock Exchange. In addition, the study showed a negative relationship between the return and risk behaviour of selected companies and election announcement in Nigeria. It is recommended that government and relevant authorities should increase the surveillance of both the market and political system prior to the presidential election in order to curtail the instability during this period.

Abstract Political Parties are Political institutions which are basically designed for power acquisition for the purpose of utilizing power for public good. In other words, political parties as agents of political development are expected not only to articulate and aggregate political interest but as a secondary group, political parties are expected to bring to their fold members from various ethnic background, class and religion for the purpose of galvanising them for national development. Thus, the concepts of people and integration are so central to the conception of leadership and organisation that defines political parties. This paper through the use of historical political analysis and the use of the structural-functional theory unfolds the activities of political parties in emerging democracies as regard the process cum pattern of mobilization for power acquisition and the utilization of such power for national development and integration. Based on the analysis, the deduction is that even though the leading political parties in Nigeria are national in outlook - both in party structure and membership, the parties are defective based on institutional weakness and the inability to provide functional check on party representative in government after utilizing the party to gain political offices. This is coupled with restrictive access to political offices through the zoning of such offices based on ethnic consideration, thereby fuelling ethnic identity in the Nigerian body - politic. The paper therefore views political parties as integrative mechanisms not only for deepening and widening democratic culture in emerging democracies but also as agents of national integration and development.