Frontiers of Ethnic Brutality in an African City: Explaining the Spread and Recurrence of Violent Conflict in Jos, Nigeria

Abstract

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.

Ethnicities and Conflict: A Survey Experiment on the Effect of Narrative Framing on Perceptions in Jos, Nigeria

“…On the other hand, religious divisions are also highly salient or a useful cleavage, with indigenous and non-indigenous designations breaking down neatly along Christian versus Muslim lines (Krause, 2011(Krause, , 2017Vinson, 2020). Madueke (2018, p. 449) notes that the city's segregation as a product of communal violence can be described as 'either religious or ethno-linguistic or both,' and that '[i]n Jos city centre, segregation is mainly religious but also ethnolinguistic in some cases, since religious and ethno-linguistic boundaries tend to overlap' (see similar discussion in Best, 2008;Higazi, 2011;Krause, 2017;Madueke & Vermeulen, 2018;Osaretin & Akov, 2013, p. 351;Paden, 2012, p. 76;Segun & Jegede, 2013). Shedrack Gaya Best (2008, p. 21), local scholar and expert, also observes that both the settler vs. indigenous and Muslim vs. Christian associations are similarly useful to 'pursue certain agendas and interests as well as [to] exclude and discriminate against others.'…”

Urban inequalities and the identity-to-politics link in the Netherlands and Nigeria

“…Among groups labelled as immigrants in Jos, the Hausa warrants special attention. This is because apart from having institutional completeness like the Turkish community in Amsterdam, it is the only group in Jos that has contested the non-indigene label and lay claim to non-immigrant or indigene status with all the accruable rights and privileges enjoyed by the indigenes (Madueke 2019;Madueke & Vermeulen 2018). Also, members of the Hausa community in Jos have been more politically active than other immigrant groups such as the Igbo and Yoruba.…”