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Conflict described as ethnic or religious is usually neither. This study works through the causes of communal conflict in Nigeria and argues that the label obscures the competition underneath it.

Download the study (PDF, English)

The argument

Conflict in Nigeria is routinely described as ethno-religious, as though the identities involved were the cause. The study argues the reverse: identity is the form the conflict takes, not the reason it starts. The reasons are competition for land, for access to state resources, for employment and for political office, in a context where the state is the main route to all four.

Where those competitions coincide with a religious or ethnic boundary, the boundary becomes the line along which the conflict is fought and the vocabulary in which it is justified. Where they do not coincide, the same competition produces conflict that is not described as ethnic at all.

Why the distinction matters for aid agencies

An agency that takes the label at face value draws the wrong conclusions. It plans for a conflict between communities and misses the competition between them. It treats the religious leaders as the parties when the dispute may be about a market, a grazing route or a local government appointment. It assumes the violence is ancient and intractable when the specific disputes are recent and, in principle, negotiable.

The practical consequences for security management are direct:

• Staff identity becomes a security variable. In a conflict organised along communal lines, the profile of a member of staff determines how they are read at a checkpoint, in a market or at a community meeting. That is a risk management question, not a recruitment one.
• Neutrality is assessed locally. An agency is judged by which communities it is seen to serve and which staff it is seen to employ, not by what its mandate says.
• Access has to be negotiated with the actual parties. Those may be market associations, herders' groups, local government figures or criminal networks, and the formal community leadership may not be among them.
• Triggers are identifiable. Elections, census exercises, land adjudication and the movement of grazing herds are known points at which communal tension converts into violence. A security plan can be built around those dates.

What the study proposes

The proposals concern conflict management rather than aid delivery, but they are relevant to agencies because they describe what a functioning local mechanism looks like. Early warning that reaches the people who can act. Dispute resolution that has authority because it includes the parties rather than the state alone. Provision for the specific competitions that generate the conflict: land tenure, grazing access, employment and political representation. And a deliberate effort to prevent the boundary becoming the organising line of politics, which is what turns a dispute into an identity conflict.

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