Nigeria is a Tinderbox of Political Unrest

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton NB] Times & Transcript 

In Nigeria, Africa’s largest country by population, power-sharing is enforced by strict formal rules and political elites rely on patron-client networks to maintain support, while inter-elite relations in both countries are strongly adversarial.  

As a result, Nigeria has so far been able to avert a resurgence of the Biafra war of secession which ended in 1970.   

But the country remains instable. Government crackdowns on increasingly violent protests and a blanket Twitter ban suggest weakness at the top, while citizens face rising terrorism and kidnappings. 

The electoral success of President Muhammadu Buhari was built on the promise of ending violence and improving public administration. But the deterioration of the conditions in the southeastern and northeastern regions is very concerning.  

In the southeast, Biafra secessionist have increased attacks on government forces. Nnamdi Kanu, who founded the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement has been returned to Nigeria after fleeing an earlier trial. 

In the northeast, Boko Haram Islamists remain a major threat. In the first half of 2021, Boko Haram escalated its mass kidnapping campaign; since December more than 800 students have been abducted.  

Nigeria’s 211 million people make it one of the most diverse in the world, with around 250 distinct ethnic groups. The three largest groups are the Yoruba, which originate from the southwest, the Igbo originating from the southeast, and the Hausa-Fulani who inhabit the north.  

The latter group encompasses the original Hausa inhabitants of the region as well as the Fulani conquerors of the nineteenth century who have adapted to local Hausa customs.  

Sharp cleavages exist between these ethnic groups as well as among them and other minority groups. Nigeria is also religiously divided with around one half of the population adhering to Islam, concentrated in the north, and the other half to Christianity, concentrated in the south. 

Nigeria became independent from Britain in 1960 with a Westminster majoritarian parliamentary system and a federal structure built around three regions: the North, East, and West. This structure caused ethnic and regional tensions from the onset. 

These regions were only joined together as one state by Britain, the colonial ruler, in 1914. The south had been developed economically and socially under colonial rule, while the north had been ruled indirectly through the Hausa-Fulani emirs who resisted modernisation.  

At independence in 1960, southerners feared they would be marginalised by the north’s demographic majority, while northerners feared domination by the South’s educational and economic advancement. Meanwhile, minorities feared domination by the majority groups in each of the three federal regions. 

In 1966, two military coups brought an end to Nigeria’s First Republic. Violence broke out against Igbo migrants in the north and southwest. This led to their return to their home region and a declaration of independence of the southeast as the state of Biafra. The subsequent secession war lasted from 1967 to 1970. 

In 1979, a presidential system was installed with a strong executive president that needed to be elected by a majority of the votes and at least a quarter of the votes in two-thirds of the states, rather than a simple majority.  

Political parties were prohibited from having a sectional character or relying on cultural symbols. Furthermore, the principle of “federal character” was enshrined in the new constitution These constitutional mechanisms have survived into the Fourth Republic, in place since 1999. 

Minority groups continued to clamour for their own state, in which they could have their own majority, and the number of states has increased to the current 36. 

Constitutional prescriptions and majoritarian voting ensure that political success in Nigeria relies on a party’s ability to unite divergent groupings. The largest parties today, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC), can be described as grand coalitions bridging ethnic and regional lines.  

The PDP emerged as the dominant party during the first 15 years after Nigeria’s 1999 transition to democracy. Opposition parties were regionally based until 2013, when the APC was created.  

Political parties have also devised informal power-sharing rules. The most well-known agreement is that a president and vice-president cannot both be from the North/South or Muslim/Christian. Yet all this has not prevented the instability which continues to plague the country.