Sectarian Violence in Jos Calls Attention to Resource Tensions

The sectarian violence that lasted for four days last week in the Nigerian city of Jos, where between 160 and 500 people were killed in attacks that mark the latest violence between local Muslims and Christians, has also highlighted ongoing tensions over the mineral-rich region's resource governance. While the killings themselves aren't directly related to extractive issues, but rather enduring civil conflict, the existence of longstanding discontent over management of tin extraction and mining revenues may have heightened tensions here as it has in other resource rich, and conflict prone, communities.

The social and environmental impact of mining at the local level is another fuel for dissatisfaction in Jos, where Muslim-Christian violence has been ongoing for nearly ten years. In October 2009, a coalition of NGOs denounced environmental degradation due to mining at a meeting organized by the group Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria. There, civil society representatives discussed the state of the environment and living conditions in the Jos Plateau region, as well as the need for local capacity to monitor the environmental effects of tin mining. A partner group in the meeting, the League for Human Rights, added that the government had paid little attention to environmental impact issues. A statement from the participants noted that poor enforcement of mining laws and regulations, and the misdirection of remediation funds meant for mining-impacted communities, added to the problems in the Jos Plateau.

These concerns may be compacted by the perception that the regional government has privileged one ethnic group over another. While the Jos region was originally inhabited by Christians, many migrants from Muslim backgrounds came to the region, enticed by a boom in the tin sector nearly a century ago, and the ethnic rivalries—cloaked as religious antipathy—have grown every since. The Financial Times notes that the violence may have roots in the decay of Jos as a tin town, falling from the boom days when British colonialists began large-scale tin extraction, spurred on by two World Wars, to decline during Nigeria's civil wars, and increasing irrelevance when Nigeria discovered oil.

Resultant economic hardship has underscored suspicions that one group has better adapted to the post-mining economy, and accusations of privilege and dominance have been made against each side. A Commission of Inquiry convened to investigate the ongoing violence suggested that former President Ibrahim Babangida had established a local governing structure in 1991 that favors the Muslim Hausa Fulani group, while some Hausa Fulani citizens claim that the military has targeted their community for violence on orders of the local governor.

In a resource abundant area, the real or perceived control of resource rents, and the subsequent effect on inequality and poverty, provides grounds for political or violent mobilization along ethnic and religious lines. Indeed, this January, long-simmering discontent in the oil rich but impoverished Angolan region of Cabinda, was brought to light in the deadly shooting attack by militants on the visiting Togolese football team.

Likewise, the violence in Jos this week, while not directly tied to the region's troubled mining sector, nonetheless find roots in the culture of discontent that has grown around a poorly-managed and opaque industry. And, as the violence will likely impact the livelihood of many artisanal tin miners in the region, the fallout will continue to be felt by the poor on both sides of the conflict.

LEARN MORE

• Nigerians Recount Night of their Bloody Revenge (The New York Times)
• Politics and Poverty Fuel Jos Violence (Financial Times)
• Jos Crisis: When a Mining City Becomes an Eternal Killing Field (Vanguard)
• Nigeria: NGOs Decry Unregulated Mining in Jos (NGO News Africa)
• Football Attack Highlights Risk of Conflict in Oil-Rich Angolan Province