The media often describe these conflicts as "religious crises" and reconciliatory measures have focused on engaging Christian and Muslim leaders to broker peace. This article argues that labelling these clashes "religious" is a gross oversimplification and has motivated an intervention approach that focuses on interreligious reconciliation without paying attention to the underlying issues.
As episodes of riots in the city of Jos suggest, collective violence in the region is a culmination of several factors. In the towns and cities, violent riots stem from contestations between indigenes and settlers over rights, distributable resources and political power whereas struggles between farmers and pastoralists over land are at the heart of mass killings in the rural areas. Measures aimed at promoting peace have not yielded concrete results because they have sidestepped these factors. In addition to building links across religious divides, an effective peacebuilding strategy should address the long-running contestations over indigeneity, resource-based competition, power tussles and struggles related to land ownership and use.
Comment: After the Christchurch shooting, much of the rhetoric from the right has brought up the attacks on Christians that have been happening around the world that are not reported in the mainstream media. The situation in Nigeria is held as a particularly egregious example. While the lack of media coverage is a legitimate gripe, as we can see from the above article, the situation in Nigeria is much more complex and nuanced than the call of "they're killing Christians!" allows for. It's not a religious war, despite the fact that the lines of division between factions can be simplistically reduced to religious designations.