CASES OF CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE

IN NIGERIA

The exact figure of Nigeria's population now stands at 140,003,542 according to the provisional figure of the 2006 housing and population census released by the chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), chief Samuila Makama on Friday 29 December 2006, According to Harden (1990) Nigeria is a geographical and
fluke. It is the most populous country in Africa . Among Nigeria's salient characteristics are its ethnic, cultural and religious diversity and divisiveness. For example, Nigeria has about 395 languages and not just dialects, the three leading ones being Hausa in the North, Yoruba in the south west and Igbo's in the south East.

Violence in Nigeria erupted periodically. For example, at independence the federal leaders, from the northern region, to whom power was transferred, were, assassinated on a single day. After this incident, the Igbo, who are some of the most sophisticated people in Africa, foresaw the impending conflict between the southerners and the Northerner and attempted to secede from the federation. They established their own Biafra Republic. The consequent response from the Federal government to end the secession plunged Nigeria into a civil war in which about one million people reportedly died. Unlike the situation in the Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi, the war in Nigeria was neither racially nor religiously motivated. It was a civil war in the sense that it was an internal conflict.

Though, there has not been a major genocide in Nigeria after the civil war there have been various religious conflicts and violence in Nigeria, most especially in Kaduna, kano and Plateau states. The most recent religious crisis was in 2000 - 2002 as a result of the introduction of the sharia legal system in most States in the Norther region. This led to conflict and violence between Muslim and Christians.

There were also cases of conflict and violence in Nigeria after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election. Chief Moshood Abiola who was widely believed to have won the Presidential election was subsequently detailed and presumably assassinated by the General Abdulsalam Abubakar regime. This violence is largely traceable to ethnic conflict and political division in Nigeria. It is a commonly held belief that Abiola, a Muslim, was not acceptable to the Muslim Northerners, being a Yoruba from the south, because the average northerners believed that the real Muslims are northerners in Nigeria and not people from the south. It was, therefore, widely speculated that he may have been deemed unacceptable to the northerners who still control the levers of power, including military establishment, hence the denial of his mandate by the ruling junta.

Over the years, conflict and violence in Nigeria have been caused by communal clashes.

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Nigeria yi ti gbogbo wa ni.