Religion is ever present in the theatres of violence: Elnathan John chats with Isidore Diala

Abstract

The Nigerian writer Elnathan John (born 1982) has become a preeminent commentator on the complex human drama at the core of the experience of the Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria. John is renowned for the caustic humour characteristic of his satirical treatment of virtually every facet of Nigerian life, as his Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide (2019) magnificently illustrates. In the corpus of his fictional accounts of Boko Haram insurgency (as epitomized in his debut novel Born on a Tuesday [2015]) he has been preoccupied with the necessity for a nuanced understanding of the Boko Haram phenomenon and underscoring a usually neglected or at least deemphasized human dimension at the heart of that experience. In this interview, John complicates a simplistic account of ostensible doctrinal violence by painting a telling backdrop of a dysfunctional postcolonial Nigerian state that blights the wellspring of responsible creative social life, and more crucially impoverishes and exploits religion and politics, ideally meant to foster communal rather than egotistical aspirations, by advancing other interpretations of these social constructs that gratify human greed and the will to power.