The Crisis of Belonging and Ethnographies of Peacebuilding in Kaduna State, Nigeria, Benjamin Maiangwa

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Reviewed by: The Crisis of Belonging and Ethnographies of Peacebuilding in Kaduna State, Nigeria by Benjamin Maiangwa Dare Leke Idowu BOOK REVIEW of Maiangwa, Benjamin. 2020. The Crisis of Belonging and Ethnographies of Peacebuilding in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 161 pp. $95.00 (hardcover). The Crisis of Belonging by Benjamin Maiangwa draws from "critical qualitative research and narrative inquiry methods" (13) to interrogate how contested notions of belonging and stereotypical conjectures fuel violent intercommunal conflicts in Kaduna, a Nigerian state. From a decolonial perspective, Maiangwa documents and analyzes the peacebuilding efforts of local voices and their contribution to understanding the local turn in peace and conflict studies—a Euro-American discipline in outlook and methodology. The book consists of a foreword by Dominic Aboi, a preface, a prologue, four chapters, and a conclusion. In the introduction, Maiangwa frames his argument by explaining how British colonization laid the foundation for contested claims of belonging on the basis of identity and territory, and how this foundation supports the feelings of deprivation and grievance that fuel recurrent intercommunal conflicts in Kaduna. The first chapter explores intergroup dynamics, similarities, paradoxes, stereotypical conjectures, and the complex realities that make intercommunal conflict inevitable. It traces the conceptual, historical, and sociopolitical trajectories of the precolonial bifurcation of the Fulani ethnic group and other ethnic minority groups and shows their representations to be binary opposites. Remarkably, it underscores how the notion of binary opposites reinforces the stereotypes that intermingle with ethnoreligious intolerance, contested claims over political ascendency, and socioeconomic deprivation to fuel violent intercommunal conflicts. Apart from the laudable contribution to the geopolitics and political economy of the major intercommunal crisis, a crucial feature of this chapter is the exposure of the deficiencies of terminologies like "ethnic minority communities" and the "farmer-herder" reductionist classification in capturing "the dynamic intricacies embodied in the identity of the various communities in Kaduna" (48). Arguably, this signals the need for creating appropriate concepts to capture the nuances of violent intercommunal relations in postcolonial African states. Titled "The Crisis of Belonging," the second chapter draws from personal stories and questions about the sources of conflicts to contextualize how disparate ethnicities in Kaduna conjure notions of indigeneity and claims of belonging. Maiangwa establishes that crises in southern Kaduna are ingrained in conflicting notions or ideologies of belonging between [End Page 144] ethnic minority groups and the Fulani, who lay no exclusive claim to land because they conceive it as a gift from God to humanity, while the ethnic minority groups claim a right to land by physical birth and autochthonous origin because they visualize their birthplace as their ancestral homeland. Their claim to indigenous and autochthonous belonging is a response to their historical grievances and perceived or real exclusion from the state's polity. They feel a need to defend their homeland against incursion by strangers, who, implementing sociocultural and religious notions of land as a gift, consider themselves rightful landowners. The ethnic minorities, consequent upon their "historical connection to the land as the ancestral people and first comers" (56), consider Fulani claims of belonging and expansionist efforts to upgrade their marginalized positions as a threat to their autonomy, economic development, and survival. In contrast, Fulani political power and the government's lack of response to their perceived violent expansionism have emboldened the Fulani to embark on violent expansionist migratory practices: they deliberately encroach on farmland and repeatedly unleash mayhem on the ethnic minority groups. The third chapter, titled "The Complementarity of Group Relations," argues that despite the intercommunal conflicts caused by conflicting claims of indigeneity and belonging, intergroup relations in Kaduna are not devoid of some level of harmony. The tendency of the disparate ethnicities to allude to what Maiangwa conceptualizes as the golden age of intergroup relations in Kaduna offers hopes for constructive peacebuilding efforts and postconflict reconstruction of solidarity and social cohesion. Despite glaring ethnoreligious differences, this golden age featured a strong bond of oneness, involving symbiotic and complementary socioeconomic relations and intermarriages. The fourth chapter interrogates the ethnographies of the ground-level peacebuilding toolkits of the minority ethnic nationalities and the Fulani amid state apathy and governmental ineptitude in preventing conflicts and promoting sustainable peace. Apart...