The riots that drove the Miss World pageant from Nigeria last month have been portrayed as a conflict between Muslims and Christians. While that’s the quickest and easiest way for us to understand the conflict, it neglects the ethnic basis of the riots.
Nigeria is home to hundreds of ethnic groups. The three largest groups comprise about two-thirds of the population. These are the Hausa in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Ibo in the southeast. The Hausa are mostly Muslim. The Yoruba are mostly Protestant, and the Ibo are mostly Catholic. The middle belt region of the country, which separates the north from the south, contains a mix of the three largest ethnic groups as well as many smaller groups.
In the middle belt is Kaduna, a city of some four million people. It is in Kaduna that the bloodiest of the riots took place last month, and Kaduna has been at the center of many riots since Nigeria became an independent nation in 1960. It is a city with churches and mosques, with Muslims and Christians, a place where only a few adhere to the old, traditional religions that existed long before the Arabs introduced Islam or the Europeans introduced Christianity.
When the Arabs arrived from the north in the later part of the 7th century, they established a slave trade that lasted for more than a thousand years. It was some 400 years after the Arabs arrived that any significant number of the natives in the north converted to Islam. When the Europeans arrived in the south in the later part of the 15th century, they also established a slave trade. It was not until after the slave trade had been abolished that they began converting the natives to Christianity.
How did the Arabs in the north and the Europeans in the south obtain slaves? They traded with the natives for slaves. In the north, the Hausa would raid the middle belt and the south for slaves to trade with the Arabs. In the south, the Yoruba and Ibo would raid the middle belt and the north for slaves to trade with the Europeans. The three major ethnic groups were in conflict with one another before they adopted either of the competing religions of the Arabs and the Europeans.
When the slave trade from Nigeria began, the Europeans and the Arabs were engulfed in their own religious war. And they inadvertently brought their conflict to the natives of Nigeria where it persists. Yet, the roots of endless conflicts that have plagued Nigeria for so long are ethnic rather than religious. It’s just that it’s easier for us to see it as a conflict between Muslims and Christians than between the Hausa, the Yoruba, the Ibo and hundreds of other ethnic groups.