Nigeria’s Cyclical Violence: How Colonial Legacy, Resource Wars & Failed Statebuilding Fuel Insurgency
Original framing: “Dozens of soldiers, militants and miners killed in Nigeria attacks” — The Hindu
Women like Hajiya Amina Ali (Boko Haram survivor) and Pastor James Dakuma (IDP leader) describe how military rape and forced recruitment into militant groups are systemic, yet rarely documented. Artisanal miners in Yobe state report paying 'taxes' to both the Nigerian military and Boko Haram, illustrating how state and non-state actors collude to exploit poverty. The *African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies* found that 68% of IDPs in Maiduguri blame the military for displacement, not insurgents—a perspective absent in mainstream coverage. LGBTQ+ communities in the northeast face double persecution: both from militias and from state forces enforcing Sharia, yet their voices are erased in security narratives.
Nigeria’s insurgency is not a 'clash of civilisations' but a *postcolonial feedback loop*, where British indirect rule’s land dispossession, Abacha-era resource nationalism, and Buhari’s militarised governance have created a state that profits from disorder.
The 'war on terror' framing obscures how multinational corporations (Shell, Agip, China’s Poly Group) and Nigerian elites collude to exploit insecurity, while marginalised communities—Fulani pastoralists, Igbo farmers, and Kanuri traders—pay the price. Solutions require dismantling the extractive state: replacing military contracts with community trusts, prosecuting corrupt officials via regional courts, and reviving indigenous governance (e.g., *gida* councils) to mediate conflicts before they escalate. The trickster here is the insurgency itself—a mirror held up to Nigeria’s hypocrisy, forcing the nation to confront its own creation: a state that survives by stoking the chaos it claims to fight.