Nigerian fatality rates from civil, political, ethnic and religious conflict are significantly lower than for most of the world: on a proportional population basis from 1999-2002 they were 62% of the global average and 11% of the sub-Saharan African average. But in 2002, the World Bank placed Nigeria among the most politically unstable and violence-prone 7% of the world’s population.

Overview

his CHRRD review looks at Nigeria’s recent criminal sectarian violence – both the statistics and the perceptions. For statistics, we examine deaths from political, ethnic and religious conflicts – in their global context. The focus is on two international data sets: a statistical synopsis of narratives on human rights practices for Nigeria, 1999-2002 from the United States Department of State; and Monty G. Marshall’s 1946-2002 compilation, “Major Episodes of Political Violence”. The State Department annual reports average 15-20 pages in length, compared to an average of two or three pages for annual reports on Nigeria from Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI). Human Rights Watch tends to publish theme-based reports, e.g. its February 2003 report associates approximately 610 killings from 1999-2002 with O’odua People’s Congress violence in the south-west region of Nigeria. HRW’s statistics tally fairly closely with those from the State Department.

We counterpose these data with recent institutional assessments and subjective public perceptions: cross-nationally, via the World Bank Governance Indicators and World Value Surveys of Happiness and Life Satisfaction; and domestically, via the 2001 Afrobarometer Survey of Nigerians, the 2002 UNECA governance survey, and an analysis of Nigerian crime and political novels.

This report, one in a series of literature and statistical reviews, places emphasis on the collation of primary source materials from a variety of perspectives from the global to the local. We examine and excerpt historical and current surveys, data and analyses concerning Nigeria’s violent conflicts as they relate to other nations in African and the world. Quantifying and characterising behavioural phenomena with implements such as Cartesian coordinates and extrapolations are a by-product of modernity, imbued with confidence in social evolutionism: we envisage this as a compilation of baseline indicators for Nigeria, as she undergoes social transformation.

Criminal violence is a very broad topic, and we make no attempt towards comprehensiveness. To compare violent behaviour across countries, we resort to the most extreme consequences, the intentional loss of human lives, because these data are most readily available and least susceptible to inter-cultural variation in interpretation. By so doing, however, we are excluding key components within the social violence equation, notably acts of domestic violence against women, and the recent escalation of student cult-related violence (including murders) within Nigeria’s tertiary education institutions.

Summary Points

ü Whether based on conflict-related fatalities initiated during the 1990s, or all ongoing conflicts as of 2003, Nigeria has experienced significantly lower social violence than the world average. From 1990-99, Nigeria suffered approximately 5,583 deaths from civil and ethnic conflict (Europa, 2001) while from 1999-2002, the figure increased to 7,612 (US State Department, 1999-2002). Expressed as a proportion of its population, Nigeria had on average 5.6 conflict-related casualties per one million of its inhabitants annually from 1990 to 1999, and 17.3 per million per year from 1999 to 2002 (Marshall, 2003; US State Department, 1999-2002). The corresponding figures for conflicts initiated between 1990 and 1999 were, for sub-Saharan Africa, 160 per million per year and, globally, 28 per million per year. Considering all 43 major ongoing or recently ended armed conflicts initiated between 1946 and early 2003 (those involving fatality counts in excess of 1,000 persons), Nigeria’s casualty rate per million inhabitants (2001 population) was 42, compared to 6,178 for sub-Saharan Africa and 880 globally.

ü During the first term of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic (1999-2002) two discrete episodes of inter-communal violence contributed 56% of the total violent fatalities (4,300 out of 7,612): (1) in Kaduna and Abia during February 2000, involving 2,000 Muslim and Christian fatalities over the enactment of Shari’a criminal law (United States Department of State 2001:§4); (2) in September 2001 in Jos, having “primarily ethnic and secondarily religious” causality, with 80% of the 2,300 victims being Hausa Muslims (United States Department of State 2002:§5).