Political history of an unending crisis

A history of bloodshed, destructions

The Southern Kaduna debacle has become internationally renowned, with the region having acquired the notoriety as one of the danger zones in the country. Before the Boko Haram insurgency, which conferred on the North-East geopolitical zone the indisputable identity of a battle zone, Southern Kaduna and Jos had always been considered as highly tempestuous politically, with the slightest provocation always feared to lead to a major ethnic or religious conflagration that would often last for weeks.

The intractable crisis in the southern part of Kaduna, however, usually became known with the particular town or community that served as the ‘battle front’ in the outbreak of violence. Historians traced the beginning of the hostilities to the 1940s, referring to riots by the indigenous Kataf and other ethnic groups over alleged oppressive dispositions of the emirate system. At the core of the riots was the fact that Fulani rulers had been imposed on the districts of Southern Zaria by the colonial government, a development that reportedly conferred undue advantage on a camp and skewed the balance of power in the area till date.

Professor Yahaya stated that there were riots in 1942 and 1948 over perceived discrimination by the Native Authority administration against the southern Zaria population, noting that “these protests, which in certain cases were reinforced by violence, were the beginnings of what was to become a continuous demand for political recognition and participation by Southern Zaria groups.

Protests like these reportedly continued until 1976, following the local government reforms in the country, a development that appeared to have assuaged the feelings of the ethnic communities and halted the trend of hostility in Southern Kaduna, albeit temporarily.

Professor Rotimi, however, noted that “the re-introduction of military rule in 1984, and the frenzied religious mobilisation in the North that followed the controversy over Nigeria’s purported enlistment in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1986, appeared to have opened up a new phase of ethno-religious conflict in Kaduna State. This era of conflict has witnessed three major outbursts of ethno-religious violence in southern Kaduna and Kaduna State in general, vis-a-viz; the Kafanchan disturbances of March 1987; the first Zangon Katab disturbances of February 1992 and the second Zangon Katab disturbances of May 1992.”

 

The 1987 Kafanchan violence

According to several historical sources, Southern Kaduna was thrown into its first major turmoil in March 1987 following reported theological disagreements between Christian and Muslim students at the Kafanchan Teachers College, Kafanchan. The disagreements were said to have triggered the old animosity between the politically-powerful Hausa-Fulani minority and the numerically-superior ethnic communities. The attendant effects were huge destructions and the spread of the violence to Kaduna, Katsina and others places where the crisis soon took a religious coloration between and became a Christian-Muslim fight. In the end, about 169 hotels, 152 churches, five mosques and 95 vehicles were said to have been destroyed in the Kafanchan uprising. That uprising also opened an ugly chapter in the history of the country, as it formed the point of reference for successive hostilities between the two major religions in the country.

 

The Zango-Kataf uprising of February 1992

The Southern Kaduna hostility was renewed on a large scale in February 1992, with historians noting that the 1992 upheaval was “far more serious than the Kafanchan crisis.”

According to Rotimi, complex historical, political, cultural and economic factors were responsible for the crisis, which started in Zango, a town in the Zango-Kataf Local Government Area of Kaduna State. The crisis reportedly started following plans by the local government authorities to relocate the weekly market from an Hausa-populated area to the outskirt of Zango town, a move that was resisted by the Hausa community. In the end, about 95 people were reported dead, 252 people were injured while about 133 houses and 26 farmlands were lost to the violence that erupted between the Hausa and the Kataf ethnic group.

 

The second Zango-Kataf crisis, May 1992

Following the February violence in Zangon Katab, the Kaduna State Government appointed the Justice Rahila Cudjoe Commission of Inquiry to look into the February crisis. But no sooner had the commission completed its public sitting than a fresh crisis broke out in the town, this town spreading to other cities in the state. At the end of that upheaval, 471 persons were officially confirmed killed, with 250 and 188 of these deaths occurring in Kaduna city and Zangon Katab respectively, Rotimi said. He maintained that police report back then revealed that 518 persons were injured, and 229 houses and 218 vehicles were destroyed in the same riots.

“These official figures may, however, represent an understatement of the scale of casualties and destruction during the May 1992 riots. Indeed, the presentations of the Zangon Hausa community to the relevant government investigatory panel included names of some 1,528 members of the community who reportedly died in the disturbances,” Rotimi stated in his journal article.

 

Many crises, no end

As the years wore on, Southern Kaduna continued to be embroiled in different bloody clashes such as the Kafanchan crisis of the early 2000s and many smaller scale uprisings, which continued to threaten the peace of the state. But the 2011 post-presidential election violence in the state, which according to the Fulani camp was the basis for the current reprisals in the area, took everyone by surprise, coming several years after there had been a relative peace in Southern Kaduna.

The violence, which started after the declaration of the presidential election results that returned former President Goodluck Jonathan, affected many towns in Southern Kaduna including Kafanchan. Several reports put the number of dead persons in the clash at hundreds, while hundreds of properties were also destroyed.

With the latest round of violence, the Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, maintained that about 20,000 had been lost in different clashes in Southern Kaduna since 1980, even as he expressed his government’s readiness to tame the hostility monster in the region. The questions, however, are whether or not the measures put in place would be able resolve the Southern Kaduna crisis once and for all. Or will another reprisal follow the current spate of killings when the losing side manages to gather momentum? When next will the next blood be shed in the south of Kaduna? And which town will carry the banner of violence the next time round?