Is Nigeria doomed to follow Sudan's example?
By Peter Run
Posted ThuThursday 21 AprApril 2011 at 2:28amThuThursday 21 AprApril 2011 at 2:28am , updated ThuThursday 21 AprApril 2011 at 2:34amThuThursday 21 AprApril 2011 at 2:34am
People holding wooden and metal sticks demonstrate in Nigeria's northern city of Kano, where running battles broke out between protesters and soldiers as President Goodluck Jonathan headed for an election win, April 18, 2011. (AFP)
As Nigeria, Africa's most populous state, descends into another period of post-election violence, the dynamics of its recurrent conflict seem to look alarmingly like those that are dividing the other African giant, Sudan.
The current wave of riots was triggered by the Independent National Election Commission's (INEC) announcement on Monday that the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, won in the initial round of ballot counts. That there were riots in the largely Muslim inhabited northern states where the defeat of the Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari was intolerable, was unsurprising.
Northerners felt they were entitled to the presidency for the declared winner, President Jonathan, assumed leadership after the Muslim president, Umaru Yar'Adua died in office last year and radical groups in the north had seen his ascent as a temporary matter to be corrected at this year's election. Now they are angry despite experts and observers concurring that this is the fairest and most independent election in recent Nigerian history. Such is the role of religion and ethnicity in diverse postcolonial states.
Since its independence from Great Britain in 1960, Nigeria has never been free from ethnic and sectarian unrest. The Muslim majority in the north shares very little in terms of values with Christians and traditional African believers in the natural resource rich southern states. Power struggles between the two regions culminated in the Biafran War 1967–1970 which ushered in successions of military rules that lasted until 1999 when Olusegun Obasanjo was elected.
Nigeria's ethnic and religious division is remarkable similar to that of Africa's largest and soon to be partitioned country, Sudan. Even before it gained independence from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium in 1956, Sudan was already embroiled in a separatist civil war between the Christian and traditionalist population in the natural resource rich southern region and the Muslim majority in the north. Historians call the violent-free decade between 1972 and 1983 a window of peace but the fight to redraw the map of Sudan had always been on even when no guns were fired. The same can be said about Nigeria even though secessionist sentiments are not as conspicuous.
While Sudan's ethnic divisions have always been complicated further by race (Arab versus African), the comparative similarity with Nigeria in terms of religious division between a Muslim north that is relatively less endowed with earthly riches and a potentially rich southern region home to Christians and traditionalists determined to break away, is very remarkable indeed.
In the case of Sudan, it took a determined and visionary Dr. John Garang to craft a nationalist ideology that gave oxygen to his liberation struggle for more than twenty years. While Dr. Garang genuinely wanted to remake Sudan into a secular state, he also understood that the average South Sudanese did not see the benefit of coexisting in the same state and share natural wealth with a Muslim majority against whom several historical grievances could be listed. More importantly, there was an entrenched belief in South Sudan that the Arab-Muslim values were incompatible with Christian and traditional African beliefs and practices.
The Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) understood this general feeling and insisted on granting the people of South Sudan the right to self-determination through referendum. That compromise, in the presence of a military stalemate between the two parties, was stipulated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) negotiated in Naivasha, Kenya in 2005. When that referendum was implemented in January this year, almost 99% of South Sudanese worldwide chose to break away from the Republic of Sudan.
The two regions of Nigeria have this problem of incompatible values that are due to eventually tear the map of Sudan in two. It is possible that if the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria was given a chance to vote, it would probably choose to secede from the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Critics might argue that the situation in Nigerian is not so serious as to warrant secession but such a claim would be turning a blind eye to the root causes of these recurring series of violence.
At face value, the current state of affairs in Nigeria is markedly different to how things are, or have been in Sudan. For example, Presidency has rotated between Nigeria's two regions; it never did in Sudan. There is relative development activity in both of Nigeria's region whereas in Sudan, resources have been taken from the south to develop northern projects. Even more importantly, Nigeria's ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) has devised an unwritten power-sharing strategy called "zoning" in which the north and the south should rotate the presidency; two terms each, at a time.
As remarked in The Guardian, this undemocratic conflict management scheme seems to have been eroded by President Jonathan's institutional reforms aimed at increasing transparency and credibility in a country known for corruption. Doing away with zoning may have no immediate effect (assuming current riots evaporate) but the perception of one group preparing the stage to stay in power is one that gets quickly noticed in diverse postcolonial states.
With Nigeria's history of nationalist separatism, ethnic violence and perpetually simmering sectarian conflict, descending into chaos is never far away. Since it is in chaos that separatist leaders find voices to inflame prejudices and list injustice to rally internal and external support, the possibility of Nigeria falling asunder like Sudan is schedule to do this July, is very real indeed.
Peter Run is a PhD student and tutor at The School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland.
Posted 21 AprApril 2011ThuThursday 21 AprApril 2011 at 2:28am , updated 21 AprApril 2011ThuThursday 21 AprApril 2011 at 2:34am
Unrest, Conflict and War