Crime, Cults, and Informal Security

This chapter looks at the evolution of informal security actors in Nigeria, their scope of operations, and how they seem to be changing the face of the security architecture in the country. Key changes include: the expanding space of operations in view of new insecurity challenges and ineffective responses to the security needs of the people by the formal security actors; a syncretic relationship between the formal and the informal security actors within the country’s security framework; and the political implications of informal groups for security sector reform, decentralization, and other possible ways forward. The chapter takes a critical look at informal policing actors in the different parts of the country (specifically at their mode of recruitment, funding sources, mode of operations, and gender representation), and the opportunities that exist for them going forward in the national security architecture.

Pastoralism, Ethnicity, and Subnational Conflict Resolution in the Middle Belt

This chapter explores the problem of rising pastoralist–farmer and ethnic (religious and tribal) violence in the pluralistic Middle Belt region of Nigeria over the past thirty to forty years. In particular, it highlights the underlying issues and conflicts associated with these different categories of communal intergroup violence, the human and material costs of such conflict, and the broader implications for the Nigerian state. The federal government, states, local governments. and communities have not been passive in addressing the considerable challenges associated with preventing and resolving such conflicts. It is clear, however, that they face significant hurdles in resolving the underlying grievances and drivers of conflict, and their efforts have not always furthered the cause of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Greater attention to patterns of inclusion and exclusion and to the allocation of rights and resources will be necessary, particularly at the state and local government levels, to create a more stable and peaceful Middle Belt.

Fiscal Policy during Boom and Bust

This chapter explores the history and challenges of fiscal policy in Nigeria. It examines fiscal policy since independence in 1960 up until contemporary times. It explores the transition from an agriculture and trade-dominated government to the rise of crude oil as an important and dominating part of government revenues, and the subsequent effects the boom and bust of the crude oil commodity cycles have had. The chapter cycles through the conditions that led to the first oil boom and crash in the late 1970s, the difficult decades of adjustments that followed, and the fiscal reforms enacted during the democratic years. The chapter examines strategies that have been put in place at various points in time and explores the risks for fiscal policy going forward.

Precolonial Christianity and Missionary Legacies

Nigerian church history has transformed the way global missions and their legacies have been understood. This chapter relies on the work of scholars who view missions as more than tools of colonialism and Nigerian Christianity as more layered than a simple reaction to foreign influences. Nigerian Christianity grew as a challenge to and reassertion of authority. Some initiatives countered foreign missionary and government control, while others were outcomes of power struggles amongst Nigerians. Since 1960, when Nigeria became Africa’s most populous and arguably wealthiest nation, religious dynamics have shaped its major social, cultural, and political transformations. While Nigerians at home are navigating questions of religion in the public sphere, millions of diasporic Nigerians, often as missionaries themselves, are part of the tremendous religious changes occurring globally. Through the lenses of dissent, reform, and renewal, this chapter traces Nigerian Christianity’s unique vibrancy and relevance in the modern era.

Nigeria’s Non-Western Democracy

A movement for “non-Western democracy” has emerged from a world frustrated with the inability of liberal democracy and neoliberal globalization to achieve conflict resolution, economic justice, and cultural self-determination and consensus, especially in developing world contexts. Underscoring its decentralized ethnic structures and social movements, which have developed consensual democracy mechanisms and models to address the problems and opportunities that come with democratization, this chapter presents Nigeria as a case study of non-Western democracy. The chapter chronicles Nigeria’s evolving and transformational intersections of culture, democracy, and ethnic community in ways that inform a contemporary understanding of the ongoing pressures relayed by the country’s ethnic social movements and struggles, its consociational revisions to liberal democracy, and its invocation of decentralized, cultural consensus models. The conclusion reveals how these processes underlay the distinctiveness, challenges, and opportunities confronting Nigerian democracy and analyzes them in the context of a contemporary debate about political restructuring.

Nigeria and the World

The years 1914–60 witnessed an acceleration and intensification of contacts between Nigerians and the wider world. While some impacts are familiar—global depression of the 1930s, two World Wars, and the emergence of anticolonial nationalism after 1945—other relationships remain obscure. This chapter outlines key developments in Nigerian politics during the colonial period and identifies key political actors. It demonstrates the recurrent importance of Nigerian connections overseas and elsewhere in Africa. Whether as soldiers, Islamic scholars, or nationalist politicians, these international links provided a vital conduit for new ideas, languages, and relationships. A burgeoning trade union movement (after the 1945 General Strike), the critical influence of African-American politics, and renewed contact with the wider Islamic world are key themes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Northern Nigerians who traveled abroad for the hajj and as students of Islamic history, theology, and the Arabic language.

In the Trenches with Fela

This chapter focuses on the protest political music works produced between Nigeria’s independence and her redemocratization in 1999. It is an intervention on the unconsciously held view that Fela was the only popular musician who confronted the military and tyrannous leaders of Nigeria between 1960 and his passing in 1997. Whereas Fela’s Afrobeat gained renown as a strong protest category, other forms such as reggae and highlife also provided avenues for popular music protest in the time Fela held the reins. In demonstrating that Fela provides only one piece of the cultural tapestry, the chapter discusses protest political music material outside of Fela’s repertoire, which enriched the sociopolitical space of pre-1999 postcolonial Nigeria.

Drivers and Dynamics of Electoral Reform, 1999–2015

A large body of research examines questions relating to the quality of Nigeria’s elections, focusing on the mechanisms of fraud, the likelihood of violence, or the virtues of administrative reform. After briefly summarizing these issues, this chapter focuses on important reforms contained in a 2010 electoral reform law, such as new rules pertaining to party primaries and requirements to post electoral results at the polling unit level. It then asks why these reforms passed. Most explanations focus on the change of leadership in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). However, the chapter points to reform-minded coalitions in the National Assembly that emerged during presidential leadership crises in 2006 and 2010, as well as important shifts within civil society that increased INEC’s operational latitude and provided political “cover” from partisan interference. The complementary convergence of a coalition for reform inside government and a constituency for reform outside government, were critical to the successful conduct of the 2011 and 2015 elections.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and its Lasting Impact

This chapter describes aspects of the transatlantic slave trade specific to regions that now comprise Nigeria and provides a review of academic research since the Second World War on the causes, effects, and character of the trade. Because of its volume, duration, and destabilizing effects, the trade had a profound impact on Nigeria’s political and economic evolution. Modern scholarship has centered around five recurring questions: How large was the trade? How efficient and productive was slave labor relative to free labor? Did the trade catalyze the Industrial Revolution in England? Did the trade retard the long-term economic development of Africa? Why did Africa, as opposed to many other potential source regions, become the New World’s primary provider of slave labor? Despite decades of research and scholarly debate, questions about the economic motives for the transatlantic trade and its long-term effects on Africa’s development remain unsettled.

Introduction

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and arguably its most important. This introduction provides a succinct overview of the volume’s organization into six thematic areas: chapters within Part I, “Locating Nigeria in African History,” explore the historical, spatial, and cultural dimensions of Nigeria’s existence, including its colonial past and its place in the Atlantic trade. In Part II, chapters covering “political institutions” analyze Nigeria’s legislative politics since independence, its experiments with different executives, as well as federalism, electoral politics, and the operational modalities of its military regimes. Several chapters within Part III explore civil society from theoretical, comparative, and historical perspectives. This includes labor, women’s movements, and protest music. Part IV explores and explains the vicissitudes of Nigeria’s economic performance, including the impact of oil and the possibilities for reforming that problematic sector. Within Part V, several chapters study the sources of insecurity, including Boko Haram, Biafra’s secessionist revival, and farmer-pastoralist tensions. Those authors also consider sources of conflict resolution and alternative tools for public safety, such as informal security services. Part VI situates Nigeria within a globalized world, outlining its foreign policies, transnational features of its religious practices, and its leadership role in international organizations.