APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 20 20 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL problem. The prevailing perspective, which also contributes to casting the conflict on the international stage as part of an eternal struggle between Islam and Christianity, is fundamentally flawed and ignores the main problem. Although ethnic and religious issues are not irrelevant to the conflict between the settler Hausa-Fulani community and indigenous Plateau residents, overlooking other contributing factors, including economic ones, undermines any serious effort at finding a lasting solution to the problem. Although the religious element must be appreciated, understanding its nexus with the material condition of the parties involved is equally pertinent because of the conflict’s potentially broader implications for international security and peace, especially pertaining to Islamic extremism that in some instances expresses itself in the form of terror activities.6 Northern Nigeria is experiencing an uptick in incidents involving Islamist extremism. The group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has offered to train Nigerian Muslims ‘in weapons, and give you whatever support we can in men, arms and munitions to enable you to defend our people in Nigeria’.7 Until the troubles in Plateau are located within the context of the political economy of the various groups antagonistic toward one another, Jos will continue to boil. DOMINANT PERSPECTIVES The ethno-religious and regional differences dividing Nigerian society and its disparate groups are naturally popular topics of examination. In public discourse and academia, they are blamed for the difficulty in building a strong and truly united Nigerian nation. This is widely acknowledged in the country on a daily basis, as reflected in a song by Bongos Ikwue, one of Nigeria’s celebrated musicians: I know a Hausa Yaro [boy] who loves an Igbo Ngo [girl] I know a Yoruba Bola, who loves a Tiv Kwasa Due to mama’s teachings, religious differences Tribalism feelings, the Yaro and the Ngo, the Bola And Kwasa, Mustapha and Christopher, Dan and Nda couldn’t live together. This they call religion, and I won’t live in that region. No, no . . . !8 As noted, from a religious perspective, the conflict in Jos is perceived as a dispute between the Muslim Hausa-Fulani community and the Plateau Christian population. The ethnic strand of the explanation of the conflict pits the settler Hausa-Fulanis 6. On 15 March 2010 the sultan of Sokoto, while speaking to members of the National Youth Service Corps, ruled out religion as a cause of the crisis, instead noting ���a combination of ethnic, political and economic factors’. See Leadership: For God and Country, 16 March 2010. 7. Oluwole Josiah et al., ‘Violence: al-Qaeda offers to train, equip Nigerians’, Punch, 2 February 2010, www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201002023311090. 8. As cited in Ogoh Alubo, ‘Understanding the issues in the citizenship-indigeneship crisis in Nigeria’ in Joseph Golwa and Oche Ojiji (eds.), Dialogue on Citizenship in Nigeria (Abuja, Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, 2008), 1.