IRIN Focus on indigene-settler conflicts

Clashes which broke out on New Year’s Eve between Fulani herders and local people in Mambilla Plateau, northeastern Nigeria, were the latest in a string of violent conflicts between so-called settlers and indigenous people that have rocked the north and centre of the country in recent years. Disputes over land between older communities and presumed newcomers accounted for much of the ethnic and religious unrest which claimed hundreds of lives last year and left tens of thousands displaced. Land ownership claims were central to the violence involving Tivs and Hausa-speaking Azeris that broke out in Nasarawa State in June. Clashes between local Christians and Hausa-Fulani Muslims in Jos, capital of the central state of Plateau, in September, and between Tivs and Jukuns in Taraba State in October were also rooted in similar disputes. Recognising this, President Olusegun Obasanjo tasked a special commission he set up last October to investigate the causes of ethnic and religious unrest, to work towards a solution to the problems posed by the settlers-indigene issue. However, some analysts trace the problems to the nature of modern Nigeria: an agglomeration of various ethnic nationalities that is yet to become a nation. "While contacts among its at least 250 ethnic groups predated colonial conquests, Nigeria of today is a patchwork of sometimes disparate peoples stitched together by imperial Britain more for administrative convenience than for any other purpose," historian Nengi Gbalafuma told IRIN. Indeed, Nigeria was once described by the politician Obafemi Awolowo as "a mere geographical expression". But whatever its shortcomings, the inheritors of this modern nation-state of over 120 million inhabitants have had to face the difficult challenge of welding a cohesive nationhood out of its kaleidoscope of peoples. This task has been made even tougher because the various ethnic groups have tended to guard their pre-colonial territory jealously. And what state leaders needed most to facilitate integration turned out to be what they sorely lacked, a clear definition of citizenship rights. With colonialism in retreat in the 1950s, Nigeria was administratively split into three autonomous regions, corresponding to the spheres of influence of its biggest ethnic groups: the Hausa-Fulani in the Northern Region, the Yoruba in the Western Region, and the Igbo in the Eastern Region. The central region, with more than 150 ethnic minorities, was part of the northern region, and therein lay the seeds of much of the future conflict. The British had forged a strong alliance with the Sokoto Caliphate, formed by the leaders of a Fulani jihad early in the 19th century, under their system of indirect rule that ceded authority to local monarchs. Through the creation of the Northern Region, control over the central minority groups, including many that had successfully resisted Islamic conquest for centuries, fell to the emirates. The colonial rulers also actively discouraged the activities of Christian missionaries in the north as well as the introduction of Western education. On the other hand, southern Nigeria - the eastern and western regions - acquired Western education relatively early as a result of long years of contact with Europeans. By the early 1950s, most of the administrators helping the colonisers to run the civil service in the Northern Region were southerners. However, as soon as the regions gained self-rule in 1954, the north began a "northernisation policy", which resulted in a massive purge of southerners employed in the region. "Between January 1954 and August 1958, a total of 2,148 southerners were dismissed from the northern public service and encouraged to seek employment in the south where they belong," writes Olawale Albert in a recent book, 'Federalism and Political Restructuring in Nigeria'. The policy continued through the 1960s and served further to reinforce the concept of holding on to one’s indigenous area to the exclusion of 'outsiders'. "Even under the present political dispensation," adds Albert, "there is no specific law or policy which makes it mandatory for any state of the federation to employ ‘strangers’ from other states." The subsequent break up of the three-region structure and creation of more states not only freed the minority groups of the central region from immediate Hausa-Fulani influence, but also restored to them the concept of their own, exclusive homeland. This was made even more acute by the migratory tendencies of the Hausa-Fulani, who are mainly traders and farmers. Over several decades, they have formed large communities among the original inhabitants of the central region. Since they have often been richer and wielded greater political influence than the local people, it was not difficult for resentment to brew. One of the first indications that tempers had reached explosive levels was violence that broke out in 1992 in Zangon Kataf in the northern state of Kaduna between the local Kataf people and Hausa-speaking settlers. It was sparked by an attempt by the Kataf to reclaim the community’s main market by moving it away from the Hausa quarters. In the past two years this type of violence between so-called settlers and indigenes has become more frequent. Some analysts find an additional catalyst for such conflicts in the introduction of strict Islamic or Sharia law since late 1999 by several predominantly Muslim Hausa-Fulani states in northern Nigeria. This is perceived by the non-Muslim minority groups as a move to achieve cultural hegemony over them. "With the advent of Sharia the non-Muslims have simply raised their guards and any slight misunderstanding could lead to violence," Wilson Bawa, a sociology major at the University of Jos, told IRIN. Other analysts see an additional factor at play: the southward march of the Sahara Desert. "There is increased pressure on land as farmers and herders leave the arid belt and move further south ahead of the desert into the central Guinea savannah," Usman Bako, who studied agriculture at the University of Zaria in Kaduna State, told IRIN. Hardest hit by encroachment of the desert are the Fulani herdsmen who for centuries had freely roamed a previously greener Sahel in search of pasture for their cattle, he said. Unlike the urban Fulani, who embraced Islam, conquered the old Hausa city states, merged with their ruling classes and assumed their language - eventually becoming indistinct from their Hausa hosts - the nomadic Fulani continue to roam. And as pastures keep shrinking, they increasingly find themselves in conflict with sedentary farming communities.