Nigeria has not evolved political formulas that explicitly allow religion or religious authorities to define legitimacy. There have, however, been struggles carried out in religious terms over constitutional mechanisms for adjudicating conflict. Religion also has been an element in the conflict between ethnic-language groups. Finally, religion provides a language, a set of values, and institutions through which groups struggle and over which groups contend, both within and between religious communities. It has been necessary for northern leaders to stress Islam in order to maintain northern unity. However, Islam itself has worked to intensify fissures opened up by social and economic change in Nigeria. Islam in Nigeria continues to be contentious in both domestic and foreign policy.
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References
1.
The debates have been published in Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, Official Report (Lagos: Government Printer, 1977).
2.
2. Dudley, Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics, pp. 163-164.
3.
3. Ibid., p. 164.
4.
Lawrence A. Rupley , “Revenue Sharing in the Nigerian Federation,”Journal of Modern African Studies, 19(2):257-278 (1981).
5.
5. Let me reiterate that giving percentages here should not lull the reader into thinking that we are dealing with hard figures.
6.
“Contrasts and Continuity in a Dependent City: The Case of Kano, Nigeria,” in Third World Urbanization, ed. J. Abu-Lughod and C. Hay (Chicago: Maaroufa Press, 1977). A forthcoming book of Lubeck's gives details from the surveys.
7.
7. Abner Cohen, “The Politics of the Kola Trade,” in Readings in the Applied Economics of Africa, vol. 1, Microeconomics, ed. Edith Whetham and Jean Currie (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967).
8.
8. Laitin, “Shari's Debate.”
9.
9. This position is argued with persuasiveness and sophistication in David Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: The Politics of Religious Change among the Yoruba (forthcoming). Laitin argues that in Yorubaland religious symbols were constrained while another cultural division, based on membership of different city kingdoms, informed practical life.
10.
and in David Laitin, “Hegemony and Religious Conflict” (Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Denver, CO, Aug. 1982), p. 18.
11.
11. An extensive discussion of brotherhoods can be found in John Paden, Religion and Political Culture in Kano (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
12.
12. Ibid., p. 179. There are sizable numbers of the Mahdiyya, sometimes called Ahmadiyya, among the Yorubas.
13.
13. Ibid., pp. 179-80. The Usmaniyya saw themselves as heirs to the legacy of the northern leader Usman dab Fodio.
14.
14. Ibid., p. 180.
15.
15. David Laitin, “Conversion and Political Change: A Study of (Anglican) Christianity and Islam among the Yorubas of the Ile-Ife” (Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 28-31 Aug. 1980).
16.
16. Dorothy Remy, “Underdevelopment and the Experience of Women: A Nigerian Case Study,” in Nigeria: Economy and Society, ed. Gavin Williams (London: Collings, 1976), p. 24.
17.
17. Lubeck, “Unions, Workers and Consciousness,” p. 169.
18.
18. This is argued in a forthcoming manuscript by Paul Lubeck, based on his surveys in Kano.
19.
I am grateful to Professor Watts for sending me this essay in advance of publication. See also Michael Watts and Paul Lubeck, “The Oil Boom and the Popular Classes,” in The Political Economy of Nigeria, ed. I. W. Zartman (New York: Praeger, 1984), pp. 105-145.
20.
20. Ibid., p. 22.
21.
21. Ibid., p. 23.
22.
22. Dudley, Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics, p. 163.
23.
23. In fact, Shehu Shagari did not win quite 25 percent of the vote in 12 states but in a series of contested court actions he was declared president in the 1979 elections by virtue of having won 20 percent of the vote in the twelfth state.
24.
24. The Buhari regime, which came in at the end of 1983, actually has had the most Muslims among its leadership of all the five military regimes since 1966—the other four being Ironsi's, Gowon's, Mohammed's, Obasanjo's. Ironsi and Gowon were Christians, as was Obasanjo. Not only is Buhari a Muslim but high-ranking Yoruba officers in the government, including the regime's second highest, and other officers are largely Muslims.
25.
25. I am indebted to Paul Lubeck for this formulation of Islam's appeals, but he is not responsible for my use of his formulation, of course.
26.
26. For a major study of the adoption of Aladura Christianity, see J.D.Y. Peel, Aladura: A Religious Movement among the Yoruba (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). Peel is concerned to explain the fundamental character of a religion of industrialization in the Yoruba context as a new morality of obeying rules. Ibid., p. 299.
