Designing disorder: spatial ordering and ethno-religious conflicts in Jos metropolis, North-Central Nigeria

Abstract

This paper interrogates the connection between colonial administrative policies, its urban planning strategies and contemporary conflicts in an African city. Urban design can shed light on the socio-political processes in the evolution of the city in Africa. Apart from the master-servant relationship that characterized Euro-African relationship in the built environment, colonial regularization, and rationalization of urban space foregrounded power relations between different African groups in the city. This promoted struggles for space between different African groups -indigenes and settlers. Relying on interviews, focus group discussions and archival sources, this article discusses the ways in which historical forces and colonialism, in this case, colonial administrative policies and urban planning ethos, promoted a certain spatial ordering and power relations among disparate racial, ethnic and religious groups and the grievances they invigorated underlie nascent ethno-religious conflicts in Jos. It does so because conventional explanations in the mushrooming literature on urban conflicts and violence in Nigeria have all too often presented the conflicts as though they are recent developments, inspired by the consequences of structural adjustment programme, resurgence of identity politics and the politics of local government creation.

Frontiers of belonging and politics of identity: the materiality of funeral rituals and festivals in Nigeria’s urban space

“…From its beginning, the city was partitioned to accommodate different groups with different ethnic and religious orientations 18 . Jos has had a very turbulent past, with the colonial period marked by identity struggles over the control of tin mines, markets, residential settlements, political positions, educational and economic privileges, and cultural visibility (Nnabuihe and Onwuzuruigbo 2021). In addition to colonial-era struggles for power among the different ethnic nationalities in the city, the creation of a local government in 1991 and the contests over political positions between 1994 and 2001 brought the city’s conflicts to public attention (Nnabuihe 2020).…”

“…The claim of ‘no-man’s land’ has permeated Lagos, which has in turn led to questions of ethnic ownership. Similarly, ownership claims have sustained the conflicts for many decades (Nnabuihe and Onwuzuruigbo 2021; Trovalla et al . 2014).…”

“…The claim of 'no-man's land' has permeated Lagos, which has in turn led to questions of ethnic ownership. Similarly, ownership claims have sustained the conflicts for many decades (Nnabuihe and Onwuzuruigbo 2021;Trovalla et al 2014). Consequently, ethno-religious groups in these cities have devised several means to express and claim ownership of urban spaces, including the use of cultural practices such as funerals and festivals.…”

Social Integration in Multicultural Societies: A Qualitative Study

“…Describing a multicultural society is definitely what is being disintegrated and even a prolonged or at least conflict is a symptom of a conflict that would be a time bomb to become a conflict (Rangkuti & Lubis, 2018), (Perić, 2020), (Kondrla, 2021). (Kondrla, 2021)Some other phenomena of Global conflict are the conflict between the German group (Choi et al, 2019), the conflict iPaul-Binyamin & Haj-Yehia, 2019), the religious conflict in Chihuahua Mexico (Savarino Roggero, 2020), the religious conflict in the Metropolitan City of Northern Nigeria (Nnabuihe & Onwuzuruigbo, 2021), the religious conflict in Pakistan (Ahmed & Brasted, 2021).…”

Politics of Security Sector Reform: Violence and the Emergence of Regional Security Outfits in Nigeria

“…Explanations for the prevalence of non-state security actors in most parts of Africa, include weakness of the state, chronic shortage of state revenue, lack of government presence in hinterlands, decades of rapid urbanization without corresponding infrastructure in municipalities. 19 These factors have not only deepened the decline of the state and stimulated questions of ungoverned spaces but it has also opened up spaces for non-state actors, worsening the questions of insecurity in the continent. This has in turn induced agitations for SSR.…”