The politics of religion in Nigeria: the parameters of the 1987 crisis in Kaduna State

Abstract

This article analyses the immediate and long term causes of the outbreak of religious violence between Muslims and Christians in Kaduna State, Nigeria, in 1987. The author argues that the crisis arose from the politicisation of religion in the regional contest for power. On the one hand is the issue of the rise of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam. On the other is the struggle for political power by the ‘northern Oligarchy’ within the north and against the south in which religion has become a means for forging new coalitions.