Against the background of social conflicts in Nigeria, in which religious and ethnic identities are prominent, and the increasing emergence of “emancipation” groups on social media to pursue Southern Kaduna interest, this study set out to examine the prevailing representations of the Southern Kaduna Christian Self and the Hausa-Fulani Other by members of an online Forum.
This study was motivated by the discovery that members of the online forum widely invoke religion and ethnicity in their online practice. In this project, I applied postcolonial theory and research in digital religion to analyze contents from the online Forum between 2013 and 2014, which I also complemented with an online survey administered to Online Forum users.
The literature examined in Chapters two and three shows that scholars have engaged substantially with issues of conflicts and Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria. They show that while Christians and Muslims have co-existed for a long time, their relationship has been marred by several political and religious contestations that are sometimes manifested in violence, especially in northern Nigeria. In terms of relationships between Christians and Muslims in Kaduna, the literature shows that pre-colonial and colonial religious, political, and social formations and state-making processes contributed; so do the re-emergence of old grievances in pursuit of contemporary interests. Due to the proximity of Southern Kaduna minority ethnic groups to centers of Hausa-Fulani Muslim power, their experience in this matrix has been shaped in ways that have been marked by domination and resistance through colonial to postcolonial periods. While colonialism produced a complex situation for such groups especially by annexing them to the already established Hausa states during the indirect rule system, it was exploiting already existing tensions to achieve its own objectives. Retaining colonial institutions and structures by the postcolonial government also proved to further complicate relationships between Southern Kaduna minorities and the Hausa-Fulani whom they had already come to construct as the oppressor. In the literature review I also discussed specific conflicts in Kaduna in the postcolonial era that were defining moments for the ways Christians and Muslims relate in the state. These conflicts, it was shown, introduced the Christian-Muslim dichotomy in social
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conflicts in Nigeria, divided residents and their settlement patterns along religious lines, served as avenues for recalling old grievances, and seem to have motivated contemporary Kaduna movements that utilize the internet to pursue Southern Kaduna interests and to construct and reinforce ideas about themselves and Hausa-Fulani Muslims. Finally, I also discussed scholarly work on media in Nigeria, and the argument that media primarily focuses on the powerful and the three major ethnicities in Nigeria which have dominated politics, and silences minorities as well as representing them as violent.
I observed in my engagement with previous scholarship that much of the literature has paid more attention to ethnicity in Nigeria than to religion, despite the significance of religion in the social life of the country and its conflicts. When religion is examined, there is very limited attention to religions other than Islam and Christianity, even in the search for models of peaceful co- existence despite suggestions by scholars like Mazrui (2001) that religions such as African indigenous religions offer such a model. I also suggested that there is a certain complicity in the silencing of minorities in Nigeria, whether religious, ethnic, or both, among scholars and in representing them as violent, because while their grievances have been present for long, scholars mostly pay attention in events of violence.
The findings from the online survey administered to Forum users shows that the majority of respondents were between 20-40 years of age, male (74%) Christians (99%), of Southern Kaduna origins, that had over 2 years’ membership period on the Online Forum. Few respondents claimed to have little literacy and contact with people of faiths other than their own, and regarding their similarities to such people, 53% of respondents saw them as different and 41% saw people of other faith as a little different. Respondents also expressed their views on the factors that cause and aggravate social tensions in Kaduna and what strategies are likely to bring about lasting peace. It was noted that political strategies such as representation and state creation were scored higher by respondents than faith strategies such as prayer and interfaith dialogue.
With these insights about members and their opinions, I analyzed the content collected from the Online Forum which including conversations and posts of 2013 and 2014.
Some of the key findings from analysis of data include the following:
• Despite their proximity to members of religions other than their own, and their relatively high levels of interaction and knowledge about such religions and cultures, Online Forum
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members still engage in violent representations of Hausa-Fulani Muslims, and sometimes use their proximity to signal a belief that they had bases for their notions about the Self and Other. Thus, more than proximity is required for adequate religious literacy about other religions.
• Regarding the Self and Other, Forum members view the Southern Kaduna as oppressed, under the threat of genocide, politically excluded, religiously and morally superior, and also needed to urgently apply their agency to resist and change their social, political and cultural situation. The Other is viewed as suspicious, aggressive, untrustworthy, and inferior, but also religiously committed and loyal.
• Representations of the Self and Other in the online Forum, are characterized by several layers of ambivalence, which include both desire and disgust towards the Hausa-Fulani Muslim Other.
• Interfaith dialogue is not considered a very effective means of peacebuilding by Forum members. They expressed preference for more political solutions, such as state creation and political representation.
• The relationship between politics, religion, and ethnicity was contested through the Online Forum, and religion appeared also to be a site for contestation over several other issues, rather than a mere tool manipulated by politicians to cause conflicts.
• Forum members are knowingly or unknowingly engaged in religious work through their participation in the online forum; producing rhetoric and epistemology through their active participation, thus leaving a digital archive of religion in Africa.
In addition to the several inferences and arguments I made in my discussion of these themes, I sought to understand the mechanism of Online representation, and argued that offline conflicts play a major role as source and in determining the character of representation in the Online Forum investigated. Moreover, I explored the ways members understand religion as portrayed in the online forum and the implication of my study for understanding digital religion in Africa.
However, a question that still requires some attention is the implication of this study to interfaith tolerance and peaceful co-existence in Nigeria, considering that this, as an interest, formed part of my primary motivation for doing this research project.
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