Spaces of Conflict and Conflict of Spaces: Territory and Communal Conflicts in Jos,North Central Nigeria

Introduction

This article focuses on the persistent attachment to territory by urban communal groups and the attendant violent conflicts over those territorial stakes—in this case Afizere, Anaguta and Berom Christians and Hausa and Fulani Muslims—in Jos, North Central Nigeria. It interrogates how conflicts shape territory and how territories, in turn, influence conflicts. Contrary to the gradual geographical changes that characterise peacetime, often resulting from urbanisation processes, conflicts may cause swift, drastic spatial transformations, involving identity cleavages, land struggles, group segregation and circles of violence. Yet, few attempts are made in the growing literature on identity, land and conflicts to explore how conflicts structure territory and how territory, in turn, shapes conflict. Thus, it becomes crucial to interrogate this connection.

Communal violence, one of the deadliest forms of political violence in Africa, has characterised Jos, Nigeria, and its environs since the early 1990s. With origins in colonial urban policies (Plotnicov, 1967), communal tensions rooted in ‘local elite competition over who qualifies as “indigene” (Mang & Ehrhardt, 2019) and is entitled to political appointments, positions within government offices, access to higher education and land rights’ (Krause, 2017, p. 10) has manifested more forcefully in contemporary time claiming over 5,000 lives (Madueke, 2019; Nnabuihe, 2020). The more recent manifestation of the conflict began with the Local Government Area (LGA) creation of 1991 under the Ibrahim Babangida-led Federal Government. This boundary adjustment was carried out in such a way that the indigenous communities—Afizere, Anaguta and Berom—felt they were tactically removed from the city centre by the political calculations and manipulations of the Hausa and Fulani Muslim groups, since the area will have a Muslim majority and give them edge over the indigenes in appropriating political resources of the city. Consequently, political appointments and government positions sparked riots in 1994, 2001, 2008, 2010 and 2018 in the city.

Literature on space and communal conflicts tends to agree that territory plays a critical role either in generating violence or in addressing the phenomenon (Moyo & Yeros, 2005; Onwuzuruigbo, 2020; Varshney, 2002; Weidmann, 2009). While emerging research tends to dismiss the geographic explanations to communal conflicts (Krause, 2017), group settlement pattern tends to stimulate land struggles and conflicts. In Africa, several scholars have offered different explanations to communal conflicts and why they remain bloody and intractable. Most often, intellectual analysis of these conflicts attributes them to Africa’s greedy elites and their unrestrained lust for resources, culture clash, ethnic competitions, environmental scarcity and ungoverned forest spaces (Nasong’o, 2015; Onwuzuruigbo, 2020; Wai, 2012). Large chunks of these discourses on the conflicts have primarily focused on the value of land. This value attached to land could be due to the contested territory, often having important mineral resources that serve vital security functions, playing a critical role in the identity of a people (Okoli & Nnabuihe, 2019). As important as these studies are in understanding the nexus between social space and conflicts, they have not adequately interrogated how colonial cartography had laid the foundation for land struggles and conflicts in much of Africa, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Cameroon among others.

In Nigeria, while intellectual musings on land have demonstrated how claims to space spur violent conflicts (Albert, 1999; Arowosegbe, 2015; Egwu, 1998; Isumonah, 2003), it is crucial to examine the role of colonialism in generating these conflicts over space. Most of the cases explored in these studies resulted from conflicts between competing communal groups directly identified with specific territory, such as the struggle between Aguleri and Umuleri over Otuocha land, and Ife and Modakeke over Modakeke. In these cases, colonial manipulation and intervention in territory set the stage for violence to become a viable option, since each group in the conflict is prepared to fight for control of the space they perceive to be theirs. This implies that territory plays a crucial role in stimulating inter-group conflicts. Often, it provided the motivation and opportunity for conflict, as the spatial distribution of ethno-religious groups continued to facilitate collective organisation for conflict. Thus, settlement patterns are crucial in explaining the complexities of the relationships between territory and ethno-religious conflicts. In Jos, evidence shows that settlement pattern influences group communication and coordination for conflict. Yet, the literature has not addressed questions on how urban space provides motivation and opportunity for collective violence.

Besides, the Jos conflict has generated preponderance of studies, with several of them focusing on land and land rights as the driving forces of the violence (Krause, 2017; Madueke, 2019; Miligan, 2013; Nnabuihe, 2020; Nnabuihe & Onwuzuruigbo, 2020). Although most of these studies have interrogated the political origins of the conflict and how ethno-religious identities ‘strongly overlap and reinforce the local political cleavage, pitting the predominantly Muslim Hausa and Fulani against majority Berom, Anaguta, Afizere and other ethnic groups’ (Krause, 2017), the instrumentality of urban settlement pattern and its connection with identity conflict generation has often been neglected in the literature of Jos communal violence. It is crucial to interrogate this missing link to demonstrate how conflicts affect territory and how territory, in turn, shapes conflict in the urban environment. This is the major goal of this article. Thus, the article raises the following questions. How has conflict structured urban space in Jos? To what extent did settlement pattern, in turn, influence urban conflicts? In what ways did the interaction between territory and conflict deepen organised violence and create a culture of denial? These are the questions this article seeks to address.

The remainder of the article explores in its first section the motivation versus opportunity framework to explain how rather than whether separate settlement pattern affects conflicts and how conflicts, in turn, affect settlement patterns. The second section articulates the research design upon which the data for this article are gathered, analysed and anchored. The third section explains the interaction between colonialism and space, indicating how colonial intervention with urban space intensified ethno-religious claim to space and exacerbated conflicts in Africa. It shows how conflict has structured the urban space in Jos. The fourth section investigates how the colonial experience—territorial bonding and conflicts—is reinvented in the post-colonial era and how that experience draws the relationships between territory, ethno-religious identity and mobilisation for conflict in Jos metropolis. It explains the extent to which space influences urban conflicts and argues that exclusive settlement pattern provides the motivation for conflicts and opportunity for group mobilisation. The fifth section interrogates how these interactions have deepened organised violence and created a culture of denial. The sixth section concludes the study by drawing from the issues raised in the article.

Motivation Versus Opportunity in Understanding Territory and Conflicts in Jos

To address the question of how—and not just whether—exclusive group settlement pattern affects conflict, this article relies on ‘motivation versus opportunity’ framework, which is constant in explaining why large-scale violence erupts (Weidmann, 2009). This approach contends that collective grievances are the underlying causes of large-scale violence. The motivation explanation is framed around material incentives. In Jos, the question will be if systemic economic exclusion alone explains the lingering conflict in the area or has the lingering conflict provided a viable strategy for the fighting groups to achieve material benefits (opportunity explanation). This has received little scholarly attention, yet crucial in explaining the Jos conflict.

Territory as motivation or opportunity is a veritable explanation to how exclusive settlements affect inter-group violence. The motivation argument holds that neighbourhood leads to conflict because groups fight for territory they perceive to be theirs. On the other hand, the opportunity explanation indicates that territory is not seen by groups to be intrinsic to it; rather, by providing the context for group members to interact, territory enhances group communication and coordination for conflict. The point to underscore is that territory is crucial in setting the stage for violence to become a viable scheme if spatial group distribution eases collective organisation for conflict (Weidmann, 2009).

Moreover, group settlement pattern appears to be a critical factor in the generation of violence (Fearon, 2004). Yet, literature on the mechanisms linking separate settlement pattern and conflict in Jos remains unsettled (Krause, 2017; Madueke, 2019). Thus, existing theoretical explanations have not adequately examined the competing accounts for the role of territory in the inducement and sustenance of conflict. It is crucial to investigate if territory matters as a motivation for conflict or if groups’ spatial arrangement is a stimulant to fight since it enhances their coordination. The motivation versus opportunity debate is the most appropriate framework to explain the impact of ethno-religious—in this case the Afizere, Anaguta and Berom Christians and Hausa and Fulani Muslims—groups’ concentration in urban space in Jos on the conflict. This article provides this explanation.

Research Design

To empirically analyse how separate settlement pattern affects conflict and to understand the impact of group concentration in Jos urban space on conflict, my field research focused on how conflict structured settlement patterns; how territory drives violence; and the ways in which the interaction between territory and conflict deepens organised violence and creates a culture of denial. Attention was on how ethno-religious identity became potent in defining group boundary within the urban space and the instrumentality of such space in providing motivation or opportunity for conflict. The focus was on 12 neighbourhoods, 6 which were exclusively Christian but ethnically mixed and predominantly areas occupied by the Afizere, Anaguta and Berom (the Igbo group is a significant part of this community) and the remainder where 6 exclusively Muslim areas with Hausa and Fulani majority with insignificant number of Yoruba Muslims.

The study draws from colonial archives in Nigeria—National Archives, Kaduna; six focus group discussions with Afizere, Anaguta, Berom, Fulani, Hausa and Igbo groups; and in-depth interviews and observations, all conducted between March 2012 and January 2016. This provided the opportunity to probe memories of respondents and build rapport on the phenomena and triangulate information. Jos metropolis has three LGAs: east, north and south. The selection of Jos North and South is informed by the dominance of violence in those areas. Since geographic proximity is an important element that fosters coordination, in this study, I argue that group settlement pattern allows for interaction, indicating that such concentration provides a motivation for conflict and determines the group’s opportunity for mobilisation.

Colonialism, Urban Space and Conflicts in Jos

Colonial intervention in Africa generated identity crisis and stimulated struggles for ownership and control of land, particularly urban spaces. Colonial cartography and its connection with the problematic character of land as a source of conflict has been widely explored in the literature of African conflicts. This is evident particularly in Southern Africa—South Africa and Zimbabwe—where former settler colonies generated growing tension over who should own the land (Moyo & Yeros, 2005). Apart from stimulating racial hatred, colonial management of urban space in Africa territorialised people, induced land struggle and generated inter-group conflicts. In Zimbabwe, land reforms under Robert Mugabe reclaimed lands under the control of White minority farmers who were later accommodated in Kwara State, Nigeria, in 2004 (Odoemena, 2013). The reforms have continued to generate conflicts. In South Africa, recent developments indicate that there are significant efforts by the local population to appropriate lands of White farmers in the wine region of Stellenbosch. These activities draw attention to the need to re-examine colonial management of urban space and how it fuelled identity conflicts in Africa.

Whereas Africa did not have urban traditions dating back several millennia as was the case in the Middle East, archaeological excavations and historical accounts affirm the existence of urban condition in pre-colonial milieu (Freund, 2007; Onwuzuruigbo, 2014). Freund identified early types of urban settlements with little evidence of influence from outside Africa. This is true of the Old Kingdom of Egypt where the settlements ‘show little evidence of influence from the increasingly commercialised global networks in touch with the West’ (2007, p. 2). In the Bantu-speaking areas of present-day Botswana, there were surprisingly large human agglomerations in many settlements several centuries before colonialism. In Nigeria, many Yoruba towns as well as Calabar, Bonny and Ouidah ‘were always characterised by African inhabitants’ own notion of urbanisation and conception of urban space’ (Onwuzuruigbo, 2014, p. 4).

African cities, however, grew from the fifteenth century when several West African towns experienced rapid growth, stimulated by their involvement in foreign trade. From this point, urbanisation gained prominence in the discourse of African urban space and development. This follows an unprecedented rate of urbanisation, which compounded existing urban problems and complicated the challenge of governing African cities (Onwuzuruigbo, 2014). Thus, while the large agglomeration of people and urban experience in pre-colonial period created problems, it was the changes of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial urban milieu in Africa that has remained remarkable.

In Northern Nigeria as elsewhere in the country, colonial initiatives provided the city with new sets of institutions, infrastructure and services that changed social, commercial and economic activities. This induced a large movement of Africans from their rural enclaves to the cities in search of employment and opportunities. As such, there was a preference for urban growth—a pattern that was retained by various governments even long after the end of colonialism. The changes, growth and development of the urban areas, in turn, ‘increased population pressure, promoted rural-urban migration and further accelerated growth of towns and cities but with severe implications for the management of the urban space’ (Onwuzuruigbo, 2014, p. 4). The point to underscore is that colonialism, specifically in Jos, created a complex structure by partitioning the urban space for ethno-religious groups—natives and strangers—that continues to reinforce rhetoric of ownership, authority over land and conflicts in the city. King (2010) stated that the socio-spatial structure of the colonial city was one consisting of either two or three major sectors. These included the indigenous settlements or ‘native quarters’, Western or European sector, and the migrants’ sector or strangers’ quarters.

Jos, like other colonial urban areas in Africa, had a large population of indigenous and immigrant groups (Plotnicov, 1967). Contemporary Jos is home to disparate ethnic and religious groups such as the Afizere, Anaguta, Berom, Hausa, Fulani, Nupe, Tiv and other groups of Southern Nigerian extraction like the Igbo and Yoruba who migrated to the area at different historical periods for different purposes, thereby offering the city a complex pattern of cultural traditions.

As such, Jos has a long history of heterogeneity (Mangvwat, 1984; Plotnicov, 1967). Yet, an unassuming rhetoric of ownership and authority over land and political space has remained the major motivator for conflict in the city. Nevertheless, while Jos was officially gazetted in 1915 as a tin mining area (Ames, 1934), archaeological investigations and oral history confirm that human settlement in this upland area dates to the Early Stone Age (Isichie, 1982; Shaw, 1980). ¹ While local Afizere, Anaguta and Berom farmed in this upland region, other ethnic groups of Nigerian origin but mainly the Hausa worked in the tin mines. Since then, there has been contestations over ownership of the city. While the Afizere, Anaguta and Berom claim to be the real owners of the land, the Hausa and urban Fulani insist they founded Jos and nurtured it into a city (Krause, 2017). These contestations mostly anchored on ethnic and religious identities have reinforced political cleavages, stimulating ethno-religious conflicts, pitting Muslim Hausa and Fulani against Christian Afizere, Anaguta and Berom.

Such contestations resulted from British colonial administration’s efforts to channel the influx of migrants to the strangers’ quarters, which combined with attempts to devolve ‘Native Authority’ to the so-called ‘native aliens’—the Hausa—(Kendhammer, 2014) and stimulate conflicts over urban space. ² What is important is that colonial intervention with urban space as a way of managing differences between the various ethno-religious groups in Jos triggered hostility. Such colonial interpositions altered the modus operandi of cultural processes and initiated spatial struggles between the Christian Afizere, Anaguta and Berom and Muslim Hausa and Fulani. ³

Colonial efforts dramatically altered host–stranger relations, as colonial rule implemented the development of exclusive spaces for strangers in Jos and other Nigerian cities. The primary goals were ‘to place the migrants under colonial control, to avoid contacts between strangers and host communities and to limit the spread of minority religions’ (Fourchard, 2003). These practices induced ‘discrimination against Christians in the Muslim dominated northern states’ and generated ‘ethno-religious violence in the cities of Kano and Kaduna’ (Krause, 2017, p. 10), and it sustained ethno-religious grievances. ⁴ A similar trend was replicated in Jos such that the Hausa and Fulani had more recognition than other groups—Afizere, Anaguta and Berom—in Jos metropolis. Like Kano, Jos also experienced ethno-religious conflicts, which have become more complicated and more frequent in the post-colonial era, especially since 2001. The consequences of all these have partly manifested in the shaping and reshaping of living spaces.

The Jos Conflicts and the Emergence of Exclusive Neighbourhoods

Since 2001, Jos, hitherto known as the ‘Home of Peace and Tourism’, plummeted into crisis and insecurity. People were killed either because of their ethnicity or because of their religion, and these killings generated reprisals and raised critical questions on the value of territory as residents moved from one location to another. As such, the violence has generated substantial literature (Krause, 2017; Madueke, 2019; Miligan, 2013; Trovalla et al., 2014).

Although the most recent manifestation of the conflict began with the 1991 local government creation by the General Ibrahim Babangida-led Federal Government, the later episodes of the conflict have been bloody and intractable. The first of its kind was on 2 April 1994 between Christian Afizere, Anaguta and Berom and Muslim Hausa and Fulani. Violence began when the then military Administrator of Plateau State Mohammed Mana, a Fulani Muslim appointed one Aminu Mato—Hausa Muslim—to become the Jos North LGA Transition Chairman. His appointment was applauded by the Hausa and Fulani Muslims but was vehemently rejected by indigenous Christians (Best, 2007). Protests and counter-protests between the two groups degenerated to violence and led to the destruction of properties and two deaths (Nnabuihe, 2020).

On 7 September 2001, violence erupted again in the city and lasted for about 6 days. It was so intense that almost 1,000 deaths occurred (HRW, 2001). The immediate cause was the appointment of Alhaji Mukhtar Usman Mohammed as the coordinator of National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) for Jos North by the Federal Government. Once again, the appointment was rejected on the basis that he is non-indigene. What is particularly important is that those that who relocated moved closer to those with similar ancestry, religion, language, values and institutions and distanced themselves from those with differing ones.

On 28 November 2008, the conflict erupted again. The immediate cause was what interviewees referred to as ‘government interference in the politics of Jos North’. Elections were held for the offices of Chairmen in Plateau State. The contenders in the election were the then All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) candidate—a Hausa Muslim and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate—an indigenous Berom Christian. Both Hausa Muslims and some indigenous interviewees assume that ‘ANPP won that local government election in 2008 but the government of Jonah Jang – an indigenous Berom Christian – intervened in the matter’. The collation centre was in Jos North local government secretariat but moved to Kabong. The popular narrative is that election figures were manipulated in Kabong (Nnabuihe, 2020). Possible explanation to the sudden change of the collation centre is that ‘Kabong is predominantly an indigenous neighbourhood’, where it is safer to manipulate for an indigene. When the results were announced, the Hausa rejected it, and with the memory of previous conflicts, violence broke out again. Subsequently, violence occurred in 2010, 2011 and, recently, in 2018.

With these bloody conflicts in Jos, the variables of levels of income, class, status symbol and/or decent environment no longer inform the decision to change residency; rather, it is informed by ‘safety’. The built environment—taking residency where a person’s ethno-religious group is in the majority—defines ‘Safety’ in Jos. The implication of this is that people affiliated to specific ethno-religious orientation take up residency in one clustered colony (Trovalla et al., 2014). This trend, though applied as security measure, is a threat to inter-group peaceful relations as the occupied spaces generate tensions between groups, bond groups and serve as motivation and opportunity for conflicts.

What is particularly important is that those that moved rally to those with similar ancestry, religion, language, values and institutions and distance themselves from those with differing ones. The groups therefore attached themselves to urban spaces, which, in turn, provide the motivation for conflict and an opportunity to mobilise group members.

Motivation Versus Opportunity in Urban Space: Settlement Pattern and Mobilisation for Conflict in Jos

Until recently, ethno-religious identity was included in the analyses of civil conflicts mostly in a non-geographic way. Before now, a groups population strength and their shared common features were dominantly deployed for analysing and understanding interactions and socio-political developments between conflict actors. These approaches rarely included any aspect of spatial population distribution, which makes it difficult to understand how and not whether territory drives violence or the extent to which settlement pattern influences urban conflicts as examined in this section.

In Jos, conflict-induced exclusive group neighbourhoods distinguished the several ethnic groupings into Christian and Muslim settlements. Such group identity constructed by territory has continued to reinforce the violence in the metropolis. This follows the argument that group identification plays a role in mass violence during conflicts. The fact that ethno-religious groups in Jos since the bloody event of 2001 tend to cluster in space has also raised questions on how the clustered space has provided the groups security as well as motivation or opportunity for conflicts. ⁵ As such, Christian Afizere, Anaguta and Berom and Muslim Hausa and Fulani view the formation of conflict-induced exclusive ethno-religious neighbourhoods as part of their identities. Given the movements by different ethno-religious populations to an exclusive neighbourhood, the new spaces are seen by various populations that moved as vital resource to their continued existence.

Under such conditions, efforts are made through various means to organise. ⁶ The salient corollary of this deep-seated survival concern is that these groups tend to see territory in terms of obtaining, maintaining, developing, measuring and mobilising resources for defence or attack (Toft, 2003). This was a dominant factor in Jos, as ethnicity and religion were used within the ethno-religious settlements to organise groups for conflict.

With common religion, language and territory, it becomes easy to appeal to sentiments. Interviewees and group discussants revealed that reports often go round the city that a group has been attacked (Christians or Muslims) at specific neighbourhoods. ⁷ The intention at such occasions is to appeal to sentiments to re-enact raging fury. At that point, religion and territory provide the platform for appealing to the emotions of the concerned group. A respondent during one focused group discussion (FGD) session blamed the recurrent conflict partly on the segregated ethno-religious spaces. As an elder in his community, he explained how exclusive neighbourhoods provided the platform for mobilisation and for subsequent attacks. He contended:

It is one major reason why the crisis has continued. It provides the occupants the opportunity to mobilise easily for violence against another group. Mostly, what is used as an excuse is security of the occupied area. Arms have been acquired on both sides of the divide—Christians and Muslims… ⁸

Whereas the security explanation as the driving force for armed proliferation, group mobilisation and conflicts are valid, what appears to be the major mobilising factors are religion, territory and ethnicity. For them, what defines the boundaries are the spaces occupied by a group, their religion and their ethnicity.

In addition, the aforementioned claim corroborates Toft’s (2003) position that exclusive settlements facilitate collective action. The group discussants demonstrated how geography affects group mobilisation mechanisms for conflict. The first mechanism is that conflict-induced ethno-religious spaces drive the quest to safeguard the new territory against invaders. This drives the segregated neighbourhoods to acquire arms and pursue their collective cause. The second is on the grounds of religion. Since the groups are identified either as Christians or as Muslims, the new neighbourhoods emerge with either a church or a Mosque. While the Jos Central Mosque is still situated around Massalacin Juma’a probably because it is coordinating Muslim neighbourhoods such as Delimi, Yan Taya and Sarki Street, Christian cathedrals are being relocated probably because of constant attacks. For instance, during the fieldwork for this study, the Catholic church had acquired land at the Lamingo area—a predominantly Christian neighbourhood—to relocate its Cathedral at Katako-Konan Shagari—a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood.

In Barkin-Ladi town—a neighbouring locality to Jos—between 2001 and 2012, churches and mosques moved from their previous locations and new ones emerged. ⁹ This is significant in two ways. First, it foregrounds the group identity of the inhabitants of the emerging neighbourhoods. This is because as one respondent ¹⁰ observed ‘the neighbourhoods build Mosques or Churches within them because these structures keep them together’. To this effect, church, mosque or neighbourhood hall becomes a symbol of identity for the members of separate settlements. Second, it provides and determines the opportunities for interaction among different individuals. Since the exclusive neighbourhoods have structured the identities of its inhabitants around churches or mosques, it organises them for action or inaction. In times of violent conflict, these structures become the sources of mobilisation for conflict.

The placement of worship centre within the new neighbourhoods enables us to understand why respondents view religion as the stronger force and mechanism for mobilising for conflict. Majority of the respondents claim they take cues on group matters from ethnic and religious leaders but particularly from the religious heads. As a result, they alleged that the decision to attack the other group is taken in churches and mosques. Apart from living within the same neighbourhood and the neighbourhood meetings where the issues of neighbourhood security are discussed, the worship centre provides frequent interaction of individuals. A single religion bonds its adherents in trust, common knowledge and becomes the basis of a frequent interaction. Wherever frequent interaction is made possible, mobilisation becomes easily spread among the population through that singular identity in a way that collective action is most likely. This is because spatial proximity of individuals with a singular identity has a higher mobilisation tendency.

Group narratives show that the 28 November 2008 violence in Jos started after midnight meetings at an Ali Kazaure mosque. In a White Paper made available after the inquiries by the commission set up by the Plateau State Government, claims were made to the effect that the youths held nocturnal meetings in Ali Kazaure street and thereafter the violence started (Plateau State Government of Nigeria, 2009). Muslim groups of Hausa and Fulani extractions also claim that most times decisions to attack Muslims are taken in the Church. ¹¹ One point is clear in these narratives—individual behaviour has a strong social element. This implies that the decisions of an individual are strongly persuaded by social peers. This perspective is not new. Social scientists have constantly raised the argument that individual behaviour critically depends on social networks. What is new is that exclusive settlement has provided the proximity for interaction, and ethno-religious identity has shaped and affected interpersonal decisions in Jos.

The Jos case provides us the opportunity to understand how separate settlement mobilises people who share a certain grievance for conflicts. Within the segregated settlement, interpersonal networks are facilitated by ethno-religious identity to enhance the flow of information. Such information can be about intended actions or planned activities. FGD sessions with both Christian and Muslim groups revealed that youth activities within the segregated neighbourhoods have become stronger since 2001. ¹² During one of the FGD sessions, a youth leader noted that regular youth meetings are held in neighbourhoods, and as the future of that neighbourhood, their utmost agenda is the security of their territory. Hence, information is passed around at any crucial moment to alert people within the neighbourhoods and extend the same to others who belong to a different neighbourhood but of the same faith. ¹³

While modern communication technology has reduced the stress of spreading information and makes it a lot easier, a common group identity provided by ethnicity, religion and exclusive settlement have aided the bonding of groups and serves as motivation for conflict. Common sense suggests that barriers of geographic distance are broken by modern information-sharing gadgets, yet the opportunities made available by a separate neighbourhood have facilitated successful mobilisation for conflict. Meanwhile, most of the violence that has taken place in Jos appears to be spontaneous, and it puzzles how they are able to organise since some of them could be out of ‘their neighbourhoods’ at the time of reoccurrence

Another youth member contended that they are always ready for any eventuality. He noted that ‘these neighbourhoods are tied to our identity, so to allow people attack us in there means one day we will be no more, we do everything possible to defend it’. ¹⁴ The view is that group members are now conscious and willing to defend their territories. For them, to be constantly mobilised requires just a mere signal to indicate something has started. Thus, settlement pattern has provided the opportunity for ethno-religious identities to organise for violence. This has led to series of spontaneous and organised violence.

Organised Violence, Motivations and the Culture of Denial

Given the opportunity approach, single group identity defined by religion—Christianity or Islam—and territory becomes the rallying point and indicates that there is a strong interaction between territory and groups’ organisation of violence. Apart from the opportunity mechanism, coordinated information sharing is also key in mobilisation and organised violence. Information sharing is a lot easier when there is proximity. The more distant the group members the less likely for mobilisation and organised violence to take place without members of the opposing group having a wind of the plans. Respondents contended that modern technology is a quicker way to pass information, yet separate settlements provide them the opportunity for details. ¹⁵ It is already pointed out how the worship centres provide the avenue for information dissemination.

The youths who are assumed to be the foot soldiers for both religions in Jos co-opt other youths within the neighbourhoods by disseminating the information they were given. They preach the agenda to others by telling them how that neighbourhood is under the threat of members of the ‘other faith’. In every conflict, the degree of mobilisation depends on the nature of the conflict. Conflicts could be value or interest based. But the case in Jos is both value and interest based. This is because it involves the distribution of positions and the disagreement on ownership of the city. As such, mobilisation of a group and the consequent organised violence, therefore, are simply dependent on how group leaders or certain individuals can construct meaning around identity and neighbourhood and thereafter send out the crowd.

In a community where the everyday sermon by spiritual heads indicates division and suggests premises of inciting the followers to action, violence is most certain to happen. A cleric had noted during an FGD session, ‘we simply preach peace and ask the people to embrace peace yet we tell them that the intent of the other group is to wipe our religion away and they must never allow that to happen’. ¹⁶ This is a pattern of mobilisation and a call to violence since the group members now feel that their identity and religion are threatened. This is what Arendt (1963) called the Banality of Evil. Using that phrase, Arendt explained how and why some of the greatest evils in human history such as the holocaust, clan cleansing in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda were perpetrated not by extremists or sociopaths but by ordinary and normal people who accept the dictums, mantras and premises of their group leaders and thus eagerly participate in such activities and see nothing wrong with their actions. This explains the situation in Jos where ethno-religious identity and exclusive neighbourhood became tools for mobilisation and violence. This led to what Adigun Agbaje called a culture of denial. Agbaje noted that ‘the culture of denial, a decidedly global phenomenon plays a decisive role in our lives. Denial involves seeking to ignore or refusing to believe an unpleasant reality, deriving in fact from a desire to pretend that all is well’ (Agbaje, 2010, p. 66). While ethno-religious group identity and group territory have aided their mobilisation in worship centres and community meetings, the groups involved have constantly denied any form of organised violence. As a result, they ignore the pains and cries of others to organised violence.

In one community meeting held in an exclusive neighbourhood in Jos, an ethnic leader had asked members of his community to desist from running away from the other group; rather, they should stand to fight it all out. The leader admonished the people saying,

so in as much as we wait for the authorities to intervene and provide us with security, we must get ourselves prepared and ready to strike back whenever they show up again…, face them with anything you think is your means of self-defence, use it and fight them back.

This form of speech has several implications. It presumes that the other party is an enemy that must be annihilated. Meaning is therefore constructed into self-defence and the need to protect your territory and group identity. Once mobilised in this manner, it is difficult to hinder the banality of evil. Members of different ethnic and religious groups in Jos believe strongly that the violence in the area is a design that has been gradually implemented against them, yet each group denies that they have orchestrated any against any group, but it has been carried out against them. One discussant had noted that:

If you take close look at this crisis, you will see that the activities are well planned and perfectly been implemented. The violence is well organised, the bullet wounds of victims are strategic. So, people must have been trained for this…. Another reason why I know is organised is this: if you watch carefully, from Shagari Corner to the area behind St. Augustine Seminary, Katako area up to Osumenyi Street, behind Fatima Catholic Cathedral even to Inland hotel; these areas are gradually vacating every Christian. So, this is a deliberate and well organised plan that is been implemented for over a decade now… ¹⁷

It was for the above perception that groups sought collective preparation and collective execution to save their identity and neighbourhoods. In every self-help environment, collective mobilisation and the unleashing of violence take pre-eminence. This is driven by the perception that the government is not giving adequate attention to the security of the different population, and as a result, the groups had to improvise. Relevant literature has documented the components and circles of collective mobilisation. Mobilisation for violence in Jos, therefore, has manifested through different mechanisms and patterns.

Although there is incontrovertible evidence to show that religious institutions and youth groups have used urban space to mobilise for violence, at other times, it has been used for the opposite—mobilising for peace. In this connection, mixed neighbourhoods, including federal low-cost housing, state low-cost housing, Dadin Kowa, Kufang, Anglu Jos and Miango Road Muslims and Christians have lived together with insignificant violence since 2001 (Krause, 2017). A respondent noted that what they have done in these communities is to draw a line against narratives of violence. These close-knit communities are in constant interaction on how to improve the peace around their neighbourhoods. One neighbourhood leader noted, ‘the communities refused to accept any form of stereotyping, any form of ethnic or religious hatred and any story that will incite the people of the communities’. ¹⁸ Although, each time, the violence erupts in other parts of Jos, tensions build in these neighbourhoods, but it has not degenerated to a deep form of inter-group violence. Leaders of both religions in the areas achieved this due to interventions and unwritten agreements. ¹⁹ In 2011, during the upheavals in Bukuru and some parts of Jos, Hausa Muslim youths had burnt down a home belonging to an indigenous Christian on Miango Road. Nevertheless, given the philosophy of peace, that guides the area, Muslim community elders condemned the act and rebuilt the home of the indigenous Christian immediately. This approach gave confidence to other members of the community that they have not lost the peace drive.

Nevertheless, urban space is a salient factor in reinforcing violence. The insight here is that exclusive neighbourhoods in this context are both an ‘opportunity; and a ‘motivation’ for violence since it provides the motivation for mobilisation and opportunity for attack. Because each group feels they are entitled to where they live, it becomes the drive to defend it. This article, therefore, argues that those elements of space, ethnicity and religion shape individual views and how such individual ideologies are constructed to mean a group ideology.

Conclusion

This article has drawn attention to how group settlement pattern (concentration of ethno-religious groups) in urban space provides the motivation and opportunity for conflict. It interrogated the connections between space, ethno-religious identity and mobilisations for conflicts in Jos metropolis and provided systematic evidence on how territory bonded groups into ethno-religious identities (Christian Afizere, Anaguta and Berom and Muslim Hausa and Fulani)—for fear of losing one’s life, property, group identity, value for one’s religion and space—and stirred convulsive bloody conflicts. It argues that settlements provide the opportunity and motivation for the groups to mobilise for conflicts. The article reiterated that colonial use of urban space shaped contemporary inter-group relations in Jos. This pattern continued in the post-colonial era, structuring and restructuring settlement patterns, which have, in turn, ignited bloody and spasmodic conflicts that have become intractable.

Although global influences have long had effect on the development of African cities, external intervention—British colonial administrative policies which served to activate and harden ethno-religious identities and cleavages—played critical roles in altering harmonious inter-group relations that existed in the pre-colonial African urban area. Nevertheless, the employment of indigeneity as an agency for linking identity and space is central to several violent conflicts in Africa (Bøås & Dunn, 2013). This linkage between identity and space is historically embedded. The Jos case examined here indicates a spatial pattern of violence—the outbreaks are invariably in ethno-religious neighbourhoods—either the indigenous Christians or Hausa and Fulani Muslims. Thus, land—territory—is frequently a key issue for indigenous groups seeking to preserve a degree of cultural autonomy and the Hausa and Fulani who seek parts of these spaces for economic, political and religious purposes.

While the process of colonialism directly or indirectly contributed to the development of Jos city, primordial sentiments, claim to urban spaces and separate settlements, the emergence of ethno-religious territory in Jos metropolis provided a form of in-group bonding among the ethno-religious groups that inhabit it, which, in turn, gave impetus to incessant violent conflicts. In fact, the group territory deepened the bonding in organisations that tend to reinforce identity formation and promote practices that reinforce distrust, intolerance and hatred. This is because ‘concentration is driven by low-cost communication’ among the occupants (Laitin, 2004, p. 365) and has the tendency to mobilise groups for conflict. That is, separate territories for different ethno-religious groups in Jos are a valuable resource in sustaining the circle of ethno-religious conflict in the city.