Ethno-Religious Conflicts and National Security in Nigeria: Illustrations from the “Middle Belt”

Abstract

Ethno-religious conflict is a form of conflict supposedly generated on the basis of real or imagined “difference” rooted in ethnic and religious identities. It is “supposedly” because of the need to avoid the essentialism that characterizes discourses on identity politics, especially the independent power assigned to these identities in shaping political consciousness. The notion of ethno-religious identity derives from the congruence and the mutually reinforcing relationships between ethnic and religious identities in the social and political process. As the situation has been well captured, sometimes religious identity becomes part of an ethnic group’s identity or vice versa, and presents a volatile social mixture coupled with the power of the ethnic group’s myth of common descent (Salomone, 1991). Numerous studies have shown the overlapping boundaries between ethnic and religious identities in Nigeria in the daily struggles of groups and communities for access to power and resources, or resisting domination (Kastfelt, 1994; Adamu, 1978; Paden, 1973; Miles, 1994; Ikengah-Metuh, 1994: 12).