The 2008 Jos riots were riots involving Christians and Muslims over the result of a local election on 28 and 29 November 2008 in Jos, a city in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. [1] [2] Two days of rioting left hundreds injured and at least 761 dead. [3] The Nigerian army was deployed and by 30 November order was restored. [4]
Electoral workers did not publicly list the winners of the elections, and rumours began that the election was won by the candidate of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), barrister Timothy Gyang Buba, [5] defeating the candidate for the All Nigerian Peoples Party. People from the largely Muslim Hausa community, began protesting even before the results were released, which results to clash that claims hundred of lives between the Muslims and Christians, who largely supported Buba. [6]
Similar riots in 2001 between Christians and Muslims in Jos also killed hundreds. [7] A 2004 riot in Yelwa, another town in Plateau State resulted in the so-called Yelwa Massacre. Fighting in the north-central Kaduna State when it tried to impose shari'a law in 2000, resulted in the partition of Kaduna. This was followed by the Kaduna riots of November 2002, resulting from Nigeria's hosting of the Miss World contest, which one of its contestants had won the previous year. [8]
The two days of rioting led to the death of at least 761 people, [3] and homes, mosques, churches and schools were damaged or burned by mobs. [9] [10] The Nigerian Red Cross Society reported that 10,000 people fled their homes due to the riots, [2] [11] and were living in government-provided shelters. [6] Nigerian soldiers were sent into Jos to break up the fighting and create a buffer zone between the Christians and Muslims. [12] Flights to and from Jos were cancelled and roads to the north were blocked. [13]
Jonah Jang, the governor of the Plateau State, imposed a 24-hour curfew on four districts of the city, and soldiers were permitted to "shoot on sight" to prevent more violence. [6] Human Rights Watch alleged that soldiers and police carried out more than 130 extrajudicial killings while responding to the riots. [9] Many armed youths of both sides were arrested at military roadblocks. [12] Police reported that more than 500 people were arrested as a result of the riots. But state officials said no one was successfully prosecuted. [3]
The Yelwa massacre was a series of related incidents of religious violence between Muslims and Christians which took place in Yelwa, Nigeria between February and May 2004. These incidents killed over 700 people. The first occurred on 4 February 2004 when armed Muslims attacked the Christians of Yelwa, killing more than 78 Christians, including at least 48 who were worshipping inside a church compound. According to some sources, the signal for the attack was a call for Jihad from the local mosque.
Plateau State is the twelfth-largest Nigerian state. It’s located near the centre of Nigeria and includes a range of hills surrounding the Jos Plateau, its capital, and the entire plateau itself.
The Middle Belt or Central Nigeria is a term used in human geography to designate a belt region stretching across central Nigeria longitudinally and forming a transition zone between Northern and Southern Nigeria. It is composed of the southern half of the defunct Northern Region of Nigeria, now comprising mostly the North Central and parts of the North East and North West geopolitical zones, and is characterised by its lack of a clear majority ethnic group. It is also the location of Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory.
Religious violence in India includes acts of violence by followers of one religious group against followers and institutions of another religious group, often in the form of rioting. Religious violence in India has generally involved Hindus and Muslims.
The 2001 Jos riots were riots involving Christians and Muslims in Jos, Nigeria, over the appointment of a Muslim politician, Alhaji Muktar Mohammed, as local coordinator of the federal poverty alleviation program. The clashes started on 7 September and lasted nearly two weeks, ending on 17 September. Some 1,000 people were killed during the riots.
The 2009 Boko Haram uprising was a conflict between Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group, and Nigerian security forces.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria operates two court systems. Both systems can punish blasphemy. The Constitution provides a customary (secular) system and a system that incorporates Sharia. The customary system prohibits blasphemy by section 204 of Nigeria's Criminal Code.
The 2010 Jos riots were clashes between Muslim and Christian ethnic groups in central Nigeria in and near the city of Jos. The first spate of violence of 2010 started on 17 January in Jos and spread to surrounding communities. Houses, churches, mosques and vehicles were set ablaze, during at least four days of fighting. At least 326 people, and possibly more than a thousand, were killed.
Mohammed Chris Alli is a retired Nigerian Army major general who served as Chief of Army Staff from 1993 to 1994 under General Sani Abacha's regime and was military governor of Plateau State Nigeria from August 1985 to 1986 during the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. Many years later, he was appointed interim administrator of the state during a 2004 crisis in the state following ethno-religious killings in Shendam, Yelwa Local Government.
Presidential elections were held in Nigeria on 16 April 2011, postponed from 9 April 2011. The election followed controversy as to whether a northerner or southerner should be allowed to become president given the tradition of rotating the top office between the north and the south after the death of Umaru Yar'Adua, a northerner, when Goodluck Jonathan, another southerner assumed the interim presidency.
James Wuye is a Pastor of the General Council of the Assemblies of God Nigeria and co-director with Imam Muhammad Ashafa of the Interfaith Mediation Center of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue in Kaduna, Kaduna State, Northern Nigeria.
The 2000 Kaduna riots were religious riots in Kaduna involving Christians and Muslims over the introduction of sharia law in Kaduna State, Nigeria. It is unclear how many people were killed in the fighting between Muslims and Christians, that lasted with peaceful intervals from 21 February until 23 May 2000; estimates vary from 1,000 to 5,000 deaths.
The Miss World riots were a series of religiously motivated riots in the Nigerian city of Kaduna in November 2002, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 people. The Miss World beauty pageant, which was controversial in Nigeria, was relocated to London after bloody clashes between Muslims and Christians, caused by what some Muslims deemed to be a "blasphemous" article in the Christian newspaper ThisDay about the event. The Miss World riots were part of the Sharia conflict in Nigeria, that started in 1999 when several predominantly Islamic states in Northern Nigeria decided to introduce Sharia law.
Religious violence in Nigeria refers to Christian-Muslim strife in modern Nigeria, which can be traced back to 1953. Today, religious violence in Nigeria is dominated by the Boko Haram insurgency, which aims to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria. Since the turn of the 21st century, 62,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed by the terrorist group Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen and other groups. The killings have been referred to as a silent genocide.
Communal conflicts in Nigeria can be divided into two broad categories:
Shehu Sani is a Nigerian senator, an author, playwright and a human rights activist. He is the President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria - (CRCN). and the Chairman of Hand-in-Hand, Africa. He was a leading figure in the struggle for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria. He has been arrested and jailed by successive past military regimes in Nigeria. He was released from life imprisonment when democracy was restored in Nigeria in 1999. He contested and won the Kaduna Central Senatorial District on the platform of the All Progressive Congress on 28 March 2015.
The Jos Forum Inter-communal Dialogue Process refers to a peace process undertaken by communities living in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria.
Herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria are a series of disputes over arable land resources across Nigeria between the mostly-Muslim Fulani herders and the mostly-Christian non-Fulani farmers. The conflicts have been especially prominent in the Middle Belt since the return of democracy in 1999. More recently, they have deteriorated into attacks on farmers by Fulani herdsmen.
The genesis of the 1992 Zangon Kataf Crises could at least be traced to the onset of the British imperial regime in the Northern Region of Nigeria, in which the Atyap people began reporting loss of a land to the Hausas. In 1922, it was reported that a large piece of land was acquired by the Emir of Zaria, Dalhatu Uthman Yero, who failed to compensate the indigenous population of the region. In 1966, the land was provided to the Hausa trading settlement in the heart of Mabatado, called "Zangon Kataf", by the emir, Muhammad Usman. The Atyap resided within the district, in the Zaria Province of the Northern Region of, initially, British Nigeria, which became independent Nigeria. It was to remain utilized as a marketplace, where the indigenous Atyap people were banned from trading pork and beer by the settlers.