Jos, a central Nigerian city engulfed by deadly violence in September 2001, offers a unique case study for exploring what happens when a modern metropolis lacks the institutional capacity to regulate its competing groups, and latent rivalries ignite into widespread, systematic brutality. Emerging from combined political and cultural dynamics radically different from those of better-known examples, such as Jerusalem and Belfast, Jos provides fresh insights into the roles of group concentration and conflict framing in engendering territoriality and violence in the city. As this paper shows, Jos' colonial history in tin mining, waves of migration, and an urban policy of sociospatial differentiation have shaped and intersected with the contemporary politics of ethnicity to foster explosive relations between Christians and Muslims. Building on literature and primary data from interviews and discussions with surviving residents, the paper explicates how group geography and conflict became so entangled, leading to the so-called 'Jos crisis'. Some of the boys were my neighbours. They set the house on fire but I remained hidden inside and watched as they used big sticks and machetes on four people. Three of the people they killed were my family.1 This is just one among many stories of neighbours preying on neighbours during the violent conflict that engulfed a central Nigerian city in September 2001. A decade later, when this resident of Jos was telling me how his three siblings were murdered and his home set ablaze by people he knew well, burn scars from the incident were still visible on his face and arms. Overnight, it seemed, neighbourhoods that were once scenes of convivial coexistence became fierce battlegrounds of ethnic cleansing between Christians and Muslims. The crux of the conflict is the dispute over indigeneity. On one side are three ethnolinguistic groups indigenous to Jos -Afizere, Anaguta and Berom -who are consequently considered indigenes; on the other are the Hausa, who are more recent arrivals to the Jos Plateau than the indigenes but who established themselves in urban Jos before other groups.2 Although the conflict is about indigeneity and ownership of the
Abstract:Contestations over indigene rights and political representation resulted in Christian-Muslim riots in the Nigerian city of Jos where, between 2001 and 2010, over 5,000 people were killed. This study complements existing literature on the spatial dimension of violence by focusing on how Jos’s neighborhoods were transformed from everyday residential areas to spaces of ethnic differentiation and violence. It employs an ethnographic study to map the emergence and development of ethnic strongholds and frontiers, two kinds of socio-spatial settings conceptualized to help explain the spread and patterns of violence across Jos’s neighborhoods.
Scholars of ethnic riots disagree on which are more susceptible to collective violence between ethnically segregated and diverse socio-spatial settings. Studies of riot-prone cities have produced contradictory conclusions. This article proposes that the ambivalence stems in part from disregarding the mobile nature of armed mobs and conflating their origins with their locations of violence. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork involving mobile interviews, in-depth discussions and visual documentation, the article maps the footsteps of armed mobs from their origins to sites of confrontation during the 2008 Christian–Muslim riots in Jos, Nigeria. Findings suggest both segregated and mixed settlements contributed to violence. While armed mobs were likelier to originate from segregated neighbourhoods, mixed settlements, especially those sandwiched between segregated ones, served as frontiers for fighting; armed mobs preferred narrow alleys inaccessible to security forces. These findings' implications can advance the understanding and management of ethnic riots in urban areas.
There is considerable consensus among scholars of ethnic riots that ethnically mixed areas are more prone to collective violence than segregated ones. The conclusion is based on studies that compare levels of violence between segregated and mixed localities. While this addresses disparities between settlements of dissimilar ethnic composition, variations in the spread of violence across ethnically mixed areas remain a mystery. Seeking to explicate these variations, we propose an approach that examines not only the ethnic composition of a neighbourhood, but also its location in relation to adjoining neighbourhoods of similar or dissimilar ethnic makeup and their shared boundaries. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Jos, a violence-ridden Nigerian city, we demonstrate that ethnically mixed areas located between segregated ones experience more incidents of violence than mixed neighbourhoods not comparably located. Our findings have both academic and practical implications.
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